Arash Blog

New approach: Many small steps…

After several months of silence, I have started to get e-mails from worried friends and colleagues asking me if I am OK. Thanks everyone! I appreciate that, you are all a great support!

I am actually feeling better than in a long time, so the silence is not a sign of problems. But yes, the blog got a terrible break again. After making a big effort to prepare for the design and content update, I just lost all inspiration to work with the site. Completely… I can't explain why that happened, because I don't really know. I just didn't get that next post written, and that is definitely a sign that something needs to change. And that may not just be the site design. More about that later…

However, my regular template design work and e-mail support has worked very well during the last two months. I have done a lot of successful work on other sites I run, and I have answered more than 1.400 free support requests in February and March. I have built several new templates, both custom designs and future free releases. I have also created a couple of new WordPress themes in my native language, Swedish, just because there are very few (if any) Swedish themes out there. Those of you who have checked the facebook group for my templates may have seen the updated andreas00-07 templates and the new Daleri designs (Daleri Template and Daleri Structure - both new templates ready for release). The feedback has been great for the new designs. But on the heart of all my work, this website, nothing has happened in a long time. It is time to do something about that now, and once again I will have do think different to find the inspiration to get it done.

I have put the site re-design work aside for now to focus on the two things I consider to be the most important for now: content and strucure quality. This means that the new templates will be uploaded today, even though I didn't want to do that until I had a new design in place. I will also add the new template pages that i have been planning to add for so long. It will be sub-pages to the templates page where every single template will get a lot of additional information and material. Add-ons, replacement images, new header graphics, old versions, alternate versions and variations - and a larger screenshot along with a live demo of the template.

New advertising option

Another change is that I will add a completely new advertisement option called "template sponsorship", that allows advertisers to place a banner on one single template page and being mentioned inside the template as well. The template sponsorship is a one-time cost, and the sponsorship lasts forever! In reality, that means as long as the template is available and this site is online which is hopefully for several years ahead. It will very likely be an attractive spot for many advertisers, since the ad will be seen by thousands of people every day for a long time. The templates page has had 630.000 visitors during the last 12 months and more than 2 million templates have been downloaded, so it

So far, each template is available so there is currently 11 slots available with several more being added with the release of the new templates. Everytime I release a new template, there will be a sponsorship slot available for it as well. This will make it possible for me to continue giving away my designs and support for free - without having to place too many advertisements on the rest of the site. If you are interested in sponsoring one or several of the templates, please contact me as quickly as possible since I will start a large campaign to sell these slots soon.

New music project

Another thing that has happened recently is the forming of a new electronic dancefloor music co-operation called the Leeloo Project. I will write a whole lot more about that later, but it is good news for anyone who has followed my musical adventures and hoped for new music. There are actually new songs waiting for release already, but again, I'll wait with revealing anything more about that until I have managed to get the current content and structure in order.

So what happens now?

I got to get things done, and instead of trying to do it all at once I will do every little step - one after the other. Here is the status update. The next step will be to add pages and update templates. Then I will release new templates, atleast three of them in the first round. Then I will need to update the WordPress themes to make them work with WP versions 2.3 and 2.5 (which includes adding tag support). While doing that, I will offer advertising options on this site and thereby trying to secure the future for the site. I can't afford keeping the site online and giving away my work for free unless I find advertisers - so it is a priority. Feel free to contact me if you'd like to support my work through advertising. Then, if I can get through these details (which I know I can), I will start looking at the site design again. I like the current design, but it is still a bit boring. And change is never bad - unless it steals my focus like it has done now.

I'm back again, with the intention of doing good this time. It may not always look pretty, but if it works out then I'll be happy. Thanks everyone for hanging on. Now I'm off to get some work done.