Ok, after a little searching of my backups and making one small change, GFWD’s now has the bakie smiley available:
Oh how I missed tasty bakies, as I’m sure you did too.
To get the bakie to show up in comments, use : bakie : but remove the spaces before and after the word bakie. I hope that makes sense.
About a month ago I mentioned that a Community Forum would be coming to Get Free Web Designs but didn’t give an exact launch date:
I can’t give you an exact public release date at this time, but it’s safe to say it will be within the next 30 days or less pending no snags or hiccups with the current code work in progress.
Well today I can give you a launch date for the Get Free Web Designs Community Forum to be be live on the site. That date is Friday October 2, 2009.
So why a 2 week delay you might be asking? Well Aaron and I have been wrapping up some client projects for each of our businesses and also fine tuning things around GFWD to accommodate forum moderators and design managers. Also, a 2 week delay all things considered isn’t really too bad IMHO.
Let me just say “Thank you” for your continued patience and support of Get Free Web Designs while we get things ready.
First off, I apologize for not updating the Get Free Web Designs blog since July 18, 2009, however we’ve been keeping the design approvals moving along at a steady pace.
So why the silence around the blog? Basically Aaron and I have been super busy working on various improvements behind the scenes for the site streamlining code, creating some new features, etc. and of course we both run businesses that require us to work on our “day job” paying client projects.
The most major change coming to GFWD’s is the launching of our Community Forum.
* Take a deep breath, yes you read that correctly. A forum is coming soon *
As most people know originally we didn’t want a forum for the site but over the past few months a real need has come to light and for the site to move forward and have even more community support then we already have, the Get Free Web Designs site needs a community forum and it’s going to happen.
The basic framework is already in place for the forum on our development server but before we move it over to the live site we are doing a lot of testing, tweaking, additional programming, and other magical things before we release it for public use.
I can’t give you an exact public release date at this time, but it’s safe to say it will be within the next 30 days or less pending no snags or hiccups with the current code work in progress.
I’ve already sent out a few emails to people who have shown an interest in being moderators, but if you haven’t received an email and are interested in being a GFWD’s Community Forum Moderator, get into contact with me.
Ok, that’s about it for now. Thank you again to everyone who is showing a ton of support for Get Free Web Designs. We appreciate everything you do.
Over the past month or so Aaron and I have been hard at work behind the scenes working on our application code, HTML and CSS, basically getting things ready to launch some pretty amazing features and enhancements for Get Free Web Designs.
At the moment I won’t mention any specifics of what new features are coming to the GFWD’s website but I will hint that something a lot of our users and Open Source Web Designers want is coming in a few weeks after we do a little more testing.
Currently we’re looking for a few people to help around the site and join our support and moderation team. If you are interested in helping out with user support or various moderation positions getting ready to open up, contact us directly or comment below.
In the coming weeks I will do a more detailed post on all of our upcoming web and application enhancements for Get Free Web Designs, so stay tuned.
We really appreciate everything that the Open Source Design Community does for us, so thank you as always for your continued use and support of GFWD’s.
Doing some reading this morning, I came across the following from Google:
What would be possible if browsing the web was as fast as turning the pages of a magazine? We invite you to join us in exploring and innovating across the entire spectrum of performance – from Internet protocols to the browser to website development. Together, let’s make the web faster!
Source: http://code.google.com/speed/
Google has put together some really good videos and an open forum for discussing ways to improve speed around the web, including design elements and open source technologies.
Take a look and lets get some discussion going on here on this blog post. Share your thoughts. Comment below.
As we approach the halfway mark for the month of June 2009 things are moving along at a nice steady pace around Get Free Web Designs.
As of this GFWD weblog post we now have 411 approved free open source web designs available for download.
Thank you again to all the designer and user support for Get Free Web Designs. Without you, GFWD’s wouldn’t be the site it is today.
Lets continue to move forward and make Get Free Web Designs a premier high quality source for free XHTML and CSS web designs.
The month of May 2009 is coming to a close and here in the US we’re getting ready for a nice 3-day holiday weekend. The weather is suppose to be nice too. w00t!
However since I’m a geek with social skills I’ll have my laptop close by and working on Get Free Web Designs (while having a cold beer and some BBQ), so with that in mind I wanted to have an open call for new site feature requests.
So here is how it works, if you have ideas or a feature request that you would like to see here on Get Free Web Designs, leave a comment below with your idea or request. If you don’t want to leave a comment, that’s cool, you can always use our contact form.
As your feature requests come in, we will add them to our basecamp for possible inclusion into the GFWD source code and once we decide what will be added next, of course it will be posted here on the official Get Free Web Designs Blog.
All ideas and feature requests will be seriously considered by Aaron and myself because we want to make GFWD’s a top notch web design portal. We are already well on our way with 387 free open source web designs as of this post.
Thank you again for your continued support of GFWD’s. We really appreciate everyone who contributes to the site and helps support all the open source web designers. Have a nice weekend.
Cheers,
-Sean
Welcome to May 2009. Things are moving along really well around Get Free Web Designs. As of this blog post we now have 373 approved free open source web designs available for download.
As mentioned in a previous blog post about 338 approved web designs, our visitor traffic is really picking which is nice, so I wanted to share more visitor stats:
Now for something really exciting, for the first view days in May we’ve already had 1,147 visitors which is really awesome since we are only 4 days into the month.
Thank you again to all of our open source web designers, site users and viewers for your continued support of Get Free Web Designs.
Over the past few weeks I’ve been receiving requests from various site users and also designers asking about advertising opportunities on Get Free Web Designs, so I wanted to test the waters by placing a 125×125 pixel banner on the site and see what sort of feedback I get from our blog readers and our open source web designers.
Currently the only 125×125 pixel banner on the site is an affiliate link which is in the right side bar of the site.
For those interested in some site stats, GFWD’s is currently a Google Page Rank 5 (PR5) with an Alexa ranking of 81,766 (and it’s improving daily).
Site traffic: For the month of March 2009 we received 9,360 visitors to the site which averages out to 312 per day which isn’t bad for the site only being public for a couple months.
As of this post, we have had 6,266 visitors and we still have approximately 2 weeks left in the month and of course the site traffic and exposure is building every day.
Here are my current thoughts for ad space on GFWD’s… I’m thinking of limiting the available slots to only 8 with a price of $30.00 USD per month and if people pay 3 months in advance, they would get a price break of $20.00 USD per month, so it’s like buying 2 months and getting 1 for free.
This is still a work in progress, but please share any thoughts you might have or if you have some interest in placing a 125×125 pixel banner on the site, get into contact for more information.
After you’re done reading this blog post, be sure to check out our awesome collection of Free XHTML and CSS based web designs. We currently have over 350 designs to choose from and more are submitted every day.
Things are moving along quite nicely here at Get Free Web Designs. As of this blog post we now have 338 approved free open source web designs available for download.
Our site traffic is also picking up and a lot of designers from the early days of OSWD are now submitting designs and contributing to the site which is nice.
I want to also welcome a good friend and open source designer Andreas Viklund who is also supporting GFWD’s. Check out his profile to see his awesome designs.
Again, a heart felt “thank you” goes out to all our other web design template contributors. Without you and your support, the site wouldn’t be where it is today, so again thanks for your continued support.
