ADRIMARIE.us emerged from my super-old portfolio domain called Bluedette Design. This particular site was part of my final senior portfolio project that showcased many of my very old class digital design projects from illustrations to (super old-school) web design to a simple interactive Flash project. However by the time I finally graduated with my shiny BFA, majority of the web trends quickly updated with new/current markups such as XHTML, grid frameworks and other details within a website layout that were considered the latest trend. It was also the year (2006) that social networking services such as MySpace, Facebook và Twitter were starting to build their grounds in the interwebs and slowly rise up to the masses of common people who were lacking net presence or simply wanted to have their own personal site without going through the hassle of learning the markup languages to build one. Trong ngắn hạn, everything I’ve learned from college were basically outdated by the time I graduated.

After some years of portfolio hiatus because I’ve lacked the inspiration and even the skills to even build a Web 2.0-ish style layout, I branched out to other interests that had nothing to do with web designing in general. I wanted to join the small-bit web designing/development communities but somehow I felt intimidated by those who are part of these communities that I opted to stay away. I used to do website reviews also, thinking that it would inspire me to build my own “trendy” themes and layouts but still didn’t help. I also joined website reviewing communities to find solutions, inspirations and advise from other web designers and developers but those still didn’t help.

Eventually I discovered various software that helped simplify web design. I needed some kind of an “automated” framework to work my designs on and somehow inspired me to do my own designs once more. I even had a few freelancing clients that I would test my skills on. With that I found myself designing once more, not just for my current fandoms but also for other clients for their businesses and organizations, in addition to personal projects as gifts. For that, it was enough for me to rebuild my entire portfolio again with a domain name that I felt that was more personal to me and would help future clients (for future freelance work) remember me when they refer others in need of a designer for their business or anything else they may have in mind.

The domain name is a fuse of my real name, Adrianne Marie. I felt that this particular domain name can help identify the real me without revealing too much about myself to the public. There’s still identity-stealing crooks all over the place including the interwebs, so need to be careful.

General Domain 411

• Namecheap - domain registry
• Hostpapa – web host (I’m aiming for super-cheap and reliable environmentally-friendly web hosting now)

Tools of the Trade

• WordPress
• Artisteer 3 – for the basic WordPress theme framework.
• Adobe Photoshop CS2
• Notepad++ – while people still brag about coding their sites via Notepad (or TextEdit/BBEdit for Mac peeps), I love Notepad++ and its primary aim towards programmers and developers. Much lighter than using Dreamweaver’s Code View feature (though I don’t have Dreamweaver anymore since I lost my program CD for it).
• FileZilla – powerful FTP program

WordPress Plugins

There are 26 plugins used: 21 active plugins và 5 inactive plugins.

Active Plugins

  Akismet 2.5.6
» Automattic (url)
Used by millions, Akismet is quite possibly the best way in the world to protect your blog from comment and trackback spam. It keeps your site protected from spam even while you sleep. To get started: 1) Click the “Activate” link to the left of this description, 2) Sign up for an Akismet API key, và 3) Go to your Akismet configuration page, and save your API key.

  Enmask Captcha 1.3
» Enmask.com (url)
Plugin to validate/render Enmask captcha.

  Jetpack by WordPress.com 1.3
» Automattic (url)
Bring the power of the WordPress.com cloud to your self-hosted WordPress. Jetpack enables you to connect your blog to a WordPress.com account to use the powerful features normally only available to WordPress.com users.

  Portfolio Slideshow Pro 1.6.1.1
» Dalton Rooney (url)
A shortcode that inserts a clean and simple jQuery + cycle powered slideshow of all image attachments on a post or page. Use shortcode [portfolio_slideshow] to activate.

  Set Aside 0.2
» Martin Lormes (url)
Lets you change the post format on all posts in a category. This should come in useful e.g. when you used to run a theme that styles posts as “Asides” based on categories, and then you switch to a theme that styles them based on the post format, a feature which was introduced in WordPress 3.1

  Social Media Widget 2.9.4
» Brian Freytag (url)
Adds links to all of your social media and sharing site profiles. Tons of icons come in 3 sizes, 4 icon styles, và 4 animations.

  Social Sharing Toolkit 2.0.8
» Marijn Rongen (url)
This plugin enables sharing of your content via popular social networks and can also convert Twitter names and hashtags to links. Easy & configurable.

  Text Hover 3.2.2
» Scott Reilly (url)
Add hover text to regular text in posts. Handy for providing explanations of names, terms, phrases, and acronyms mentioned in your blog.

  Transposh Translation Filter 0.8.2
» Team Transposh (url)
Translation filter for WordPress, After enabling please set languages at the the options page Want to help? visit our development site at trac.transposh.org.

  Ultimate tag cloud widget 1.3.12
» Rickard Andersson (url)
This plugin aims to be the most configurable tag cloud widget out there, able to suit all your wierd tag cloud needs.

  WordPress Importer 0.6
» wordpressdotorg (url)
Import posts, pages, ý kiến, custom fields, categories, tags and more from a WordPress export file.

  WordSocial 0.5.4.1
» Tommy Leunen (url)
Allows you to publish your posts and pages on Social Networks.

  WP-Chú thích 4.2
» Simon Elvery (url)
Allows a user to easily add footnotes to a post.

  WP-PageNavi 2.82
» Lester 'GaMerZ' Chan & scribu (url)
Adds a more advanced paging navigation to your WordPress blog

  WP-PluginsUsed 1.50
» Lester 'GaMerZ' Chan (url)
Display WordPress plugins that you currently have (both active and inactive) onto a post/page.

  WP-Syntax 0.9.12
» Steven A. Zahm (url)
Syntax highlighting using GeSHi supporting a wide range of popular languages. Wrap code blocks with <pre lang="LANGUAGE" line="1"> và </pre> where LANGUAGE is a geshi supported language syntax. The line attribute is optional.

  WP Show IDs 110709
» PriMoThemes.com / WebSharks, Inc. (url)
Simple, yet elegant. Shows IDs for Posts, Pages, Media, Links, Danh mục, Tags, and Users in the admin tables for easy access. Very lightweight. Also supports Custom Post Types / Taxonomies.

  WP Super Cache 1.0
» Donncha O Caoimh (url)
Very fast caching plugin for WordPress.

  WPtouch 1.9.40
» BraveNewCode Inc. (url)
A plugin which formats your site with a mobile theme for visitors on Apple iPhone / iPod touch, Google Android, Blackberry Storm and Torch, Palm Pre and other touch-based smartphones.

  WP Updates Notifier 1.3.1
» Scott Cariss (url)
Sends email to notify you if there are any updates for your WordPress site. Can notify about core, plugin and theme updates.

  [pagelist] 3.7
» webvitaly (url)
[pagelist], [subpages], [anh chị em ruột] và [pagelist_ext] shortcodes