Daniel Felice

I’m Baaaack!!

// September 8th, 2009 // 1 Comment » // General

Well I have returned from my holiday and have arrived back in Sydney for the first time in a few years. We saw a lot of Europe over the past month and it was a fantastic experience that everyone must do in their lifetime!

However all good things must come to an end and now it is time to get back to reality.

I have started looking for full time work this week. It doesn’t seem as bad out there as many have mentioned, but I’ll have to sit tight and wait for some interviews.

While I am off I will start to get back into blogging and working with WPMU and BP. I am planning on refocusing this blog and updating the design in the next week or so.

Explore With Me has done OK while we have been away. The 40 day tour blog got some good hits, however the main blog is still struggling and new members are few and far between. We’ll seriously have to look at that website and decide what to do with it in the near future. It may also be necessary to refocus the site and slim it down a bit. I think we are trying to do too many things with it at the moment.

Free BuddyPress Themes is the only blog of mine that has done well while I have been away. Traffic has been on the rise, even if no one is sending me new themes. Though the next version of BP is set to dramatically change the way themes are used so maybe people are holding off for that reason.

Expect some changes and annoucements over the next few weeks!

WordPress MU 2.8.1 & BuddyPress 1.0.2

// July 11th, 2009 // 3 Comments » // Buddypress, Wordpress

WordPress MU 2.8.1 was released the other day, however if you are running the latest version of BuddyPress you should hold off upgrading until we are given the green light from the guys at BuddyPress.

There does not seem to be any major issues currently known and the testing I have done with the two current versions doesn’t seem to break anything, but there are a few little things that will need to be looked at before BP 1.0.2 is WPMU 2.8.1 ready.

If you are running bbPress with deep intergration you will also need to change a few things in the config files in order to ensure it still works. Check out the forums for all the latest updates.

Vote for the Best BuddyPress Theme

// June 1st, 2009 // No Comments » // Buddypress, Contests

As of today, all submissions to the BuddyPress Theme Contest have been uploaded to Free BuddyPress Themes and voting as begun.

Voting will be open for the next 2 weeks which after the winners will be annouced.

Thanks for everyone who entered the theme contest – there weren’t as many entries as we had have hoped, which just proved that not everyone can design a BuddyPress Theme!

Get your votes in!

BuddyPress Theme Contest on Hold

// April 27th, 2009 // No Comments » // Buddypress

The BuddyPress Free Contest being held at Free BuddyPress Themes has been put on hold until the release of BuddyPress version 1. I got a lot of concerns from people who were waiting for the v1 release just in case there were any changes that would render their theme useless.

This is a fair call and I think everyone will benefit from having the most up to date themes available to them once the contest has been run and won.

With BP v1 out this week, I will resume the contest on the weekend and leave a month or so until submissions are due.

Projects Update

// February 13th, 2009 // No Comments » // Projects

Explore With Me

Project Explore With Mewas launched in October 2008. Since then we have been testing and adding features to the site such as WordPress MU, BuddyPress, forums, various plugins, new themes and a whole lot more. The site is about 95% complete and we want to launch as soon as possible.

I had originally set my launch date for early January but then decided to wait for the final release of BuddyPress and WordPress MU 2.7. I updated the site to WPMU 2.7 two weeks ago and now we are also running BuddyPress Beta 2.

BP v1.0 was due to be launched yesterday however they have decided to release it as a “Release Candidate” due to pending changes to WordPress MU.

The site is fairly bug free at the moment and everything is ready to go. We do get very good traffic and also are finding that users are joining which is a good sign.

I think we will hold off the “official” launch date until BP v1 and WPMU 2.7(.1?). That is when we will start pushing for advertising and concentrate on bringing the traffic in.

Free BuddyPress Themes

Project Free BuddyPress Themes went live in early January. It was an idea that turned into reality in about 2 hours so there wasn’t much planning involved. The good thing is that I have had time to work on small updates to the blog as BuddyPress is yet to be in final release so the uptake has been a bit slow.

I am happy with the blog in its present form, it is effective and gets the job done. Small updates here and then are always something I’ll do.

At the moment we have 6 themes available for users to download, with 2 of them being the default BP theme. We got three new ones this week so I am hoping that once the word spreads about BuddyPress designers will start designing custom themes and upload them to the site so other users can download them.

I am thinking of putting together a BuddyPress Theme contest to try to encourage users to start designing. I am just trying to put some prizes together. Once I get a few responses I will launch the contest. It is still in its very early planning stages but hopefully we can run the contest sometime in March if all works out well.

Projects Update

// January 15th, 2009 // 2 Comments » // Projects, Wordpress

As many of you know I have a few projects that I am currently working on. Here is a quick update…

• Explore With Me: The site has been completed, BuddyPress Beta 1 is up and running, and members are joining at a steady rate. I am still saying that the site is not yet officially launched as I am waiting for the new version of WordPress MU 2.7 and BuddyPress version 1. There is no word yet on WPMU as to when it will be released, however rumours suggest it might be at the end of the month. BuddyPress v1 is set be released February 9, so once testing is complete the site will be officially launched and I’ll start the task of promoting it.

  Hits are very steady and encouraging at this early stage. I am getting a lot of traffic from the BuddyPress website, but that also means I am getting a lot of people looking at the site to check out BuddyPress rather than interested in the site. Though at this early stage anything that spreads the word is a good thing.

  As for revenue, I am making a bit of money from Google Adsense. The affiliate links have not made any money yet, but people are clicking on them so it is just a matter of time.

• Free BuddyPress Themes: This venture is very new and still pretty raw…oh and the blog is pretty empty. The site relies on users submitting their themes for others to download, but as BuddyPress is new, I don’t think many people have got past the point of installing and testing it. Once version 1 is released I think the site will begin to grow.

  Traffic is been fantastic in the past week. I have had more traffic to the site than this site got in the past two months. There is plenty of interest, but there are no themes to download as yet. I am getting the majority of traffic from the BuddyPress forums and Google searches.

Free BuddyPress Themes

// January 8th, 2009 // No Comments » // Buddypress

I started a new project last night – Free BuddyPress Themes. I came up with the idea on Tuesday so I registered a domain name, got some web hosting sorted out and then built the WordPress based site last night. The site is now up and running, however I do need to do a bit more work on it before it is complete.

The idea of the site is to share BuddyPress Themes with other BuddyPress users. The site will depend on users submitting their designs via an online form. Once I receieve the theme I will approve it and then upload it to the blog for users to download.

As far as I am aware there are no other BuddyPress Theme websites around – although it is only early days for BuddyPress and I expect there will be a lot of BP theme sites popping up over the coming months.

It is fairly bare at the moment as not many people have designed their own theme yet. Hopefully once the plugin gets more exposure, users will start to develop their own themes and then submit them to FreeBuddyPressThemes.com!