The PageRank update finally finished working its way through Jack’s Empire over the weekend. I thought I’d write a quick recap post (with tabular data, no less) showing how the PageRank on my main sites and my side projects changed.
As you can see, the Ohio Sports Report took the biggest hit but if you visit the site the reasons will be more than obvious. Early predictions for the New York City Sports report had its PageRank opening up at a 5 or better before the PageRank algorithm was adjusted. I’m very pleased with the openings for both WordPressings and Fore Score Golf Stats.
Overall, I have more reasons to be happy than angry now that the final public rankings have been released. I’ll make a similar recap post after the next update.
There’s a great online community called COLOURlovers that all graphic designers and web development people should know about. The site is full of discussion and helpful tips about color for creative types but the best part of the site is the collection of user-made color palettes that members of the site have put together and are sharing with the public.
I actually used the palette directory at COLOURlovers twice very recently. I first used the site to help me make the right choices for the look of Fore Score Golf Stats. Obviously, I was interested in using greens but with the help of the user-made palettes I found the final combination you see on the site today. My second opportunity to take advantage of the palette directory came last week. I decided to redesign the look of my custom built, invitation only MySpace profile tracking site. You can see a sample of the finished product on the right.
A lot of people find working with color difficult. If you’re a web developer strong on code but weak on design you should definitely think about checking out COLOURlovers for help with your next project.
I came across a nice post today about outsourcing graphic design work and, in particular, it mentions purchasing vector illustrations from sites like iStockphoto.
I’ve never had to go that route for client work but for side projects like Fore Score Golf Stats I managed to buy a lot of the graphics we used in the site design for under $15 USD. I went on iStockphoto looking for golf related images that had a look and feel I knew I couldn’t create on my own and came away pleasantly surprised. The amount of time I saved compared to the cost was so ridiculous it couldn’t possibly be beat.
If you’re on a budget (of time and/or money) and need some graphic work done fast and cheap don’t hesitate to think about shopping around any of the popular stock photography sites. A lot of them have more than just photos.
As I mentioned last Friday, I’ve been working on a series of projects instead of client work lately. The latest is a site called Fore Score Golf Stats. Fore Score Golf Stats is a web application for keeping track of your golf game. It records your scores and the courses you play at then gives you personalized stats and a handicap based on your data.
Work on Fore Score Golf Stats has been ongoing for the last few months but in the last several weeks a strong push was made to get the site ready for the public. I’ll probably be writing some more entries on the process involved in building the site. In the meantime, if you’re a golfer looking for a way to track your golf game online then sign up for a free account at Fore Score Golf Stats and give the site a try.
Instead of maintaining a steady diet of client work, I’ve been focusing my energy into a handful of side projects.
My business partner and I have several sports related sites coming down the pipe in the very near future (including our first public web application) under our brand i am jack’s company.
In between wrapping those projects up, I’ve put together a small site called WordPressings that will be releasing free themes for the popular blogging software WordPress. New themes will be posted at WordPressings on an irregular basis throughout the rest of this year. The first theme, called Bruise, is available now.
