Another month has come and gone as 2008 is coming to a close; I cannot believe that time is flying by so fast. GrandmasterB has been in existence now for eight months now, and I’m making tremendous strides in the community and finally finding out what works and what doesn’t when it comes to blogging. There are still a few things that I can’t seem to figure out though, like how in the hell does Alexa work? Is it even worth trying to figure out? I’m beginning to think that the system is flawed and really isn’t worth spending anymore time on. I actually ranked higher in Alexa when I wasn’t paying any attention to it. I really don’t have the time to worry about it anyways…I have a booming web design business taking over my life.

What started off as just an idea between two fellow bloggers has taken off and turned into a full fledged small business. Jeff and I currently have three projects in the works and there are more coming down the pipeline. We are in the process of setting up all of the legal information, and getting an online presence setup for the company. We have already registered the domain name and setup the hosting for it; however, we are probably looking at January or later before we launch the site. The new venture is aptly named Blog Fixers dot com, and as you might expect we specialize in setting up and fixing issues with our client’s blogs. We are not going to limit ourselves to only working on blogs though; with Jeff’s programming expertise and my design skills, we will be expanding our horizons to include custom CMS development, custom website design and much more. Until we get our website launched, I will be posting all of our work under my Design Services section. If it gets too big, I will create a separate section for my Portfolio.

(more…)

This past week I spent more time designing than I did writing up new content for the blog, but I figured that both activities lend to the overall success of the GMB Network. I received a heads up from my boy Cuzzy that Kellex (The Sports Dollar) was starting a new blog (Blaze of Love) and wanted a killer header designed by yours truly. I immediately contacted Kellex to discuss the project and after receiving some preliminary ideas from him I went straight to work.

The overall look for the header and the logo was based on the logo from the VH1 Series “The Rock of Love“. I did a little research and jotted down some ideas, and within an hour or two came up with the final product you see above. I wasn’t too big on the idea of hearts in the image, but roses had to be in the design since Portland is the “City of Roses” and the arena is called the Rose Garden. The scroll/banner is actually a free download from the T-Shirt Factory vector sets, and I think it fit in perfectly with the design. I was also able to find suitable pieces to use from the Go Media Arsenal as well for this project.

I want to thank Kellex for giving me the opportunity to design this header for his new site, and thanks to Cuzzy for spreading the word about GrandmasterB’s Design Services. Be sure to check out the site in the weeks to come as I’ve got some hot new content in development that you won’t want to miss.

~ GrandmasterB

Another week is in the books, can you believe that it’s almost mid-October already? Last week I put the finishing touches on the first project that Jeff and I collaborated on. Mike Hayes commissioned Jeff and I to create a custom designed theme for WordPress and migrate his existing Blogger site over to the new domain: SteadyBurn dot net. The design process was interesting, because Jeff and I didn’t know a whole lot about Mike or hist existing blog. Through some research and tweaking we were able to come up with a unique look that Mike was very happy with.

The theme has some cool design elements that were implemented to improve the visitors experience as well. I had read a tutorial on CSS-Tricks awhile back that would allow you to add some flare to your date badges, and implement a comment bubble to the top corner that displays the total comments on the post. It’s a very easy trick to implement into your design. I did change up the date badge a bit to make it fit the color scheme of the site. The original tutorial uses a different color for each month, but it looked a bit cartoony for this design.

Another cool element of the design are the transparent content boxes. If you look closely you can see the background carries into the left column box. It took some tweaking to get it to look right and not take away from the content, but it turned out great! Overall, this project was a lot of fun to do and in the end Mike was very happy with the design…which is what matters the most.

(more…)

It is hard to believe that the month of September is over (well…over tomorrow). Where does the time go? It seems that all of my time has been spent at work or in front of the computer at the house. I have recently partnered up with Jeff (BuzzMyBlog.com and BuzzPirates.com) to provide my services along with Jeff’s programming experience to a broader audience.

We are still working on setting up our online presence (ie. domain name, business plan, etc.); however, we are open for business and bidding on multiple projects.  So please, let us know if you or anyone you know needs some help with custom software, a website, a widget, a plugin, a gadget, an app, a blog, or even an enterprise scale Content Management System. We can do it all…and we are happy to pay referral fees. I would like to give a special “shout out” to Cuzzy for referring our first few clients. Thanks Cuzzy!

(more…)

It’s been quite awhile since I wrote up a week in review, so what better time to get back in the saddle than now? As many of you know, I struggled last month to get anything of substantial value posted up on the site and it was very frustrating. If anyone thinks that running a blog is an easy task; they’re mistaken. Finding new content that will drive readers to the site is a pain, and it only gets harder as you go. Last week I hit stride with a few quick hits and tested my hosting on Tuesday gathering up a record 315 simultaneous users online.

I’m still going through my Alexa Rank experiment that I eluded to in the August Month in Review. I think it’s working out, but the widget I installed in the sidebar is a little bit flaky. Somtimes the number fluctuates back and forth and makes me wonder just how accurate it is. (more…)