Frank Under Fire—How a WordPress Theme Designed for Speed Performed Under High Traffic Conditions

I wrote an article for Smashing Magazine a few weeks ago showcasing Frank. As was expected, my site got bombed. Since Frank was designed from the ground up to be fast, I wanted to share the results of how Frank performed on a high volume traffic day. It’s important to know that my site is hosted on a medium-tier VPS with no CDN. Read On…

Some Random Dude is Now (More) Responsive

In the past two weeks, I was able to update this site (and more importantly, the open source theme behind it) to have a responsive layout. This was the last big hurdle for me to get a final-ish version of the theme out the door.

There are still small issues that need to be addressed, but this was the big one. The next goal is to get a project page up along with some simple starting guides, take a breath and see where the project goes from there. My current site is still imperfect, but I consider it to be a good reflection of how I view responsive web design. As I mentioned in an recently, responsive web design goes beyond a responsive layout. Our designs need to address limited bandwidth and processing power associated with mobile devices.

My hope is this theme will continue to improve so that it can provide a viable option for bloggers who provide a fast, reading-centric experience for their visitors. Due to my limited schedule however, I need to rely on the community to help me push this project forward. If you have enjoyed this site and/or you would like to use this theme, I encourage you to do so. I also encourage you to help make it better for everyone else. So please, fork this theme and get in touch with me if you are interesting in contributing.

Write Like You Design

I have long held the opinion that writing was part of design. I simply did not practice it. Writing was not given much priority while I attended art school. Writing continued to be of secondary concern during the early years of my career. Evidence of this can be seen on this blog. I started taking my writing more seriously after my wife, who has her master’s degree in English, started editing my posts. It progressed further while working at Adaptive Path, where it was clear that how we communicated our work could be as important to our job as the work itself. Currently, the attention given to language in the work at Seabright solidifies a dedication to the writing process in my practice. Read On…

Write Articles, Not Blog Postings (Sometimes)

I just read a very good article by Jakob Nielsen on proper writing for weblogs. His opinion is that blogs (most notably, business blogs) should focus more on in-depth articles rather than short, post-lets. I think Mr. Nielsen’s advice is absolutely correct for a large number of business bloggers out there – but I hesitate to agree it is the best format for all business blogs. I genuinely respect Nielsen’s research on the subject, but a few thoughts from my experience have led me to the opinions mentioned below.
Read On…