Blog Theme Machine

We’ve officially changed to GUERRILLA

Mike Smith — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 09:05:08 +0000

It’s true – we’re now GUERRILLA and we’ve been over there for a few months now. Tonight is when we officially announce that this website will no longer be accepting work under the Blog Theme Machine name. What does this mean for you? If you’re reading this, it just means that there will be no more work updates here on BTM and there will be no more blog updates.

The site itself will stay up and running as a document to how far we’ve come since October 2007, but from his point on, everything will be happening over at GUERRILLA. So head on over, check it out and if you’re in need of any website or blog design work, do not hesitate to let us know. We’re there for you.

BTM is rebranding as GUERRILLA (very soon)

Mike Smith — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 04:11:00 +0000

Blog Theme Machine has been around for almost two years and it’s been a hell of a ride. I’ve worked with hundreds of clients and met thousands of great people online in the design community and other communities as well. When I first started blog theme machine I had the sole purpose of being a blog designer – and that was it. In the past few months I’ve realized I am outgrowing the “blog designer” niche I dug myself into and need to break out…

Enter the GUERRILLA

The word Guerrilla first started to become a part of my vocabulary when I read the “Guerrilla Marketing” book and was writing about my own Guerrilla Marketing Tactics on my (now sold) Bootstrapping Blog. I love the word Guerrilla and the definition behind it. It fits me and my lifestyle perfectly.

When I sold the Bootstrapping Blog I had a void I wanted to fill – I loved writing about Freelancing and Marketing in general. So after debating on names, I landed on Guerrilla Freelancing. It’s being built now to stand tall like the Freelance Switch website and also the Freelance Folder website – but with a twist – it’s built by a Guerrilla for the other Guerrilla Freelancers who’re still in the trenches like I am.

And then comes the baby sister to Guerrilla Freelancing – WPGuerrilla. Wordpress Guerrilla is the newest site in my Guerrilla network (which I, at the time, didn’t even know was going to be a network) which focuses on the CMS that’s helped me full time freelance for the past two years with Blog Theme Machine.

So where does Blog Theme Machine rebranding fit into it all?

Upon realizing that the Blog Theme Machine site was pigeonholing me into the Blog Design niche and that work had been slowing up due to the increase in Premium Wordpress Theme sites where bloggers could get awesome blog designs for a fraction of the cost that the custom blog designs I’ve been creating can go fo, I knew I wanted to venture out into more than just blog design.

Knowing that the BTM website was not built for such an expansion, I had to brainstorm again. The GUERRILLA word was catching on with the two blogs I started so I made the decision to build off of that name and create a network – much like other great networks before me: Envato and the entire TUTS network, Fuel Your Creativity and the entire FUEL brand group and many, many others.

Enter GUERRILLA

Instead of putting another catchy word with it or adding “creative/designs/studio/ect” word into it, I decided that the GUERRILLA website would be the head of the pack. I quickly picked up the www.madebyGUERRILLA.com domain as I knew it would be nice to have “made by Guerrilla” at the bottom of the websites I create which would work well for establishing the name and brand.

Plus, everyone who’s anyone has one name – Prince, Madonna, Cher, Seal, ect. So, GUERRILLA was born.

When will BTM be switched over?

This is where we’re at right now – BTM will stay live for the next few months but will be sporting a nice graphic at the top of the site letting people know we’re rebranding. No sense in just cutting everything off right away. Besides that, the building of the GUERRILLA website will take a bit of time to get right and also redesign the two GUERRILLA blogs. So, I’d say you’ll see the BTM site up until the end of the year, but the rebranding will be done by August 1st.

I will make sure the contact form here is sending emails to the proper address (the new madebyguerrilla email address) and make sure there’s no confusion on this website – once the GUERRILLA website is open, this website will be CLOSED.

What else is in store for the GUERRILLA network?

There isn’t much I can say right now but there are definitely two more blogs in the works as well as a premium theme website being built which will launch at the same time as the GUERRILLA website, the redesign of WP Guerrilla and the redesign of Guerrilla Freelancing. The two new blogs will not be launching at that time, but will be going up shortly after. Slow but steady wins the race.

Where will wordpress wednesday go?

Glad you asked Over the past couple weeks we’ve been publishing weekly wordpress wednesday round up resource articles. The articles and the #wpwednesday hash tag are starting to make headway on twitter and I would not want to see that go down so we’ll be moving it over to our Wordpress blog – WP Guerrilla.

A message to everyone who I’ve worked with

THANK YOU! Without your business and trust I would not have been able to get this far in my career. I hope you enjoy the work I’ve created for you and hope that in the future, if you ever need any other work created (or know anyone else around you who may) you feel encouraged to find your favorite GUERRILLA and chat

It’s been an amazing ride and I hope that the new expansion makes things even better and I get to meet even more awesome people! The clients I’ve had have been amazing and I love them all. Thank you from the bottom of my heart.

Wordpress Wednesday: The Trilogy

Mike Smith — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 20:14:32 +0000

Wordpress Wednesday is back for it’s third week in a row and today we’ve got a ton of awesome links. With the release of wordpress 2.8 baker, we’ve not only got some great links for the release info but also for hacks, tips, tricks and plugins related to wordpress 2.8 Also along with those wonderful links we’ve got tons of great tips, plugins, website launches and more.

So sit back, grab some coffee and enjoy your reading

Remember, use the #wpwednesday hash tag if you’d like your wordpress related articles featured here next week.

Wordpress Wednesday Weekly Round Up

Mike Smith — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 18:46:07 +0000

Welcome to the second week for #wpwednesday! I found a ton of great links for this week and have already put them up on my twitter page (feel free to follow me to receive updates and also suggest your own links).

Below are 16 links to great wordpress resources, tutorials, tips, hacks and themes. I’ve found every one of these links useful and I hope that everyone else reading this post finds them useful as well. If you have a post you’d like featured, please follow me on twitter and @ me with the link and I’ll make sure to add it in (or just tweet with the #wpwednesday hash tag).

Next week will be featuring wordpress coding services.

DON’T FORGET TO GET YOUR LINKS IN FOR NEXT WEEK – AND DON’T FORGET ABOUT THE WORDPRESS GUERRILLA LAUNCH! IT’S DEFINITELY A WORDPRESS BLOG YOU SHOULD HAVE BOOKMARKED

Today is officially Wordpress Wednesday!

Mike Smith — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 20:22:29 +0000

I tell you, twitter is a fascinating place. Earlier today I came across a tweet from @pixeldeath who mentioned that it’s looking like wednesdays are quickly becoming wordpress wednesdays and suggested two different hash tags (#wordpresswednesday and #wpwednesday). It got my brain turning and I decided to run with it (thanks for the idea @pixeldeath – you’re awesome!)

So today, for the first Wordpress Wednesday post I am going to post a round up of the links that I have tweeted and found tweeted on twitter today. Each week I will try to come up with a different type of post for wordpress wednesday, but they’ll almost always include a bunch of kick ass links for the wordpress/design community to check out – as well as the bloggers who need to figure out how to update/upgrade, fix security holes, find out the best plug-ins, ect.

So there you have it! The first official WORDPRESS WEDNESDAY! For those of you who would like to tweet wordpress related articles, feel free to use the #wpwednesday tag and I’ll make sure to get them included somehow in the future wordpress wednesday articles! and if you’re curious to see who’s tweeting about wordpress wednesday, just check out the #wpwednesday search results on twitter.

35 Amazing Light Grunge Website Designs

Mike Smith — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 05:24:56 +0000

When researching for the redesign of Blog Theme Machine I came across a bunch of really cool dark grunge website designs. However, I wanted to create something lighter, easier on the eyes and easy to navigate. But I just couldn’t get away from the idea of using grunge in the design. So I went with a really simple, clean style website that is light and easy to navigate but still uses some pretty great grunge elements.

Below are 35 more great light grunge website designs that I think are worthy of being talked about. Feel free to leave a comment and let me know what you think of them.

Mass Software Solutions

Hello I’m Tom

Blogriffic

Made by Squad

Tea Light

Fluido

Well Medicated

Maturanahaus

4PSD

Studio Bennett

R.U.4 Children

Dabutag

Little Hellos

Room Five

Tuitive

Big Omaha

Selina Herrero

vSplash

Brand New

Regenerator

HALO Creative Agency

Pally Giraffe

Dot Silver

PSD2HTML

Inspired Magazine

Nkrumah Farrar

Hardcore Marketing

Cucuu

Hugs For Monsters

Matt Hamm

Yokaboo

Getting Crazy on the Waltzers

LePushMail

Form + Function

Paul Linder

And now for the final bonus addition to the list

Blog Theme Machine

The NEW version of Blog Theme Machine is now live

Mike Smith — Thu, 14 May 2009 23:32:06 +0000

Welcome to version 3 of Blog Theme Machine! FREE CUSTOM BLOG DESIGNS FOR EVERYONE! (just kidding). I do however have a contest coming up where I’ll be giving away a free custom blog design and also some other cool prizes But back to the new website design…

The new version has been ready to go for a while now but needed some adjustments to fit the direction I wanted to take it in. A lot of items were removed (rss sidebar subscription, ect) and some things were added (sifr titles, ect). I am completely stoked about this new version and happy to see it finally hit the light of day.

The old version was one I was (and still am) very happy with, but I felt that it was distracting the attention away to the many different items I had on it. This new design is more minimal and clean/easy to follow. Another great thing about this design is that it’s been built on the 960 grid system!

There are still some kinks to work out (comment styling, ect) but I didn’t want to wait any longer to let the new version get it’s shine. I will also be blogging a lot more here now that the new design is up – there’s something about a fresh coat of paint that really helps liven your spirits.

I am going to be posting a new article in the next day or two that will explain a bit why I have been out of touch with my online places (twitter and others) and will give you a bit of background into the things going on in my personal life as well as what to expect now that I’m back.

54 Absolutely STUNNING 3D Pumpkin Carvings

Mike Smith — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 06:20:58 +0000

Its the Halloween season again and in light of that (and the fact that I just seen some awesome 3D carving on the Food Network Challenge show) I wanted to showcase 54 of the most amazing 3D pumpkin carving sculptures. And for those of you who get so inspired by this post, at the end I will post up a link to a picture tutorial on how to do these yourself. So, without further waiting, here are 54 of absolutely STUNNING 3D Pumpkin Carvings. (click the images to view the pumpkins in full size).

PLEASE NOTE THAT DUE TO HIGH SERVER LOADS THE IMAGES BELOW ARE NOT CLICKABLE. THE FULL IMAGES CAN BE SEEN IN THE CARVERS RESPECTIVE PORTFOLIOS LISTED IN THE BOTTOM OF THIS ARTICLE. THANK YOU FOR VISITING MY WEBSITE AND PLEASE SUBSCRIBE FOR FUTURE UPDATES

All of the credit to these marvelous pieces of art go to Scott Cummins from PumpkinGutter.com and Ray Villafane from Villafanestudios.com Please be sure to check out their websites for more amazing artwork with pumpkins as well as more traditional artwork (Ray is a sculpture artist for DC Comics which you can see here and Scott has a vast amount of illustration and watercolor skill displayed on Outside the Lines)

Picture Tutorial for carving 3D Pumpkins

Follow this link as Ray Villafane shows you exactly how to carve a crazy 3D Pumpkin on his website. (on a side note, a big congratulations to Ray for winning the Food Network Challenge with his amazing pumpkin carving abilities. $10K is a nice chunk of change and he definitely deserved to win).

What do you think of these pumpkins?

Feel free to leave a comment and let me know what you think of these pumpkins. They’re awesome right? Awesome enough do deserve a stumble thumbs up? What about a digg or delicious tag? Maybe even a design float? I hope so, because I’d love to have you do any of these things I just mentioned

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!!

Halloween is my favorite time of year and this post was so much fun to do. I hope you enjoy it as well.

40 Must Have Grunge Fonts From DaFont.com

Mike Smith — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 18:21:05 +0000

Designers should have at LEAST 1,000 fonts on their computer and if you aren’t lying to yourself, you’re like me and have closer to 2,000 (the last time I counted – a month or two before). Maybe you have 100 or more paid fonts mixed in with your 1000+ free fonts, but do you have all of these? If not, you should! I went through dafont on a hunt to find 40 of the best free grunge fonts. So here is a list of 40 free fonts from DaFont that you MUST HAVE!

If you know of a type of font you’d like me to hunt down for you and make a list of, please let me know and I’ll do my best to get a list together for your favorite font type.

40 MUST HAVE Grunge Fonts From DaFont.com

Sociable WP Plugin Update With Vot.eti.me Included

Mike Smith — Sun, 21 Sep 2008 19:08:52 +0000

For those of us in the design community, we all know about the new digg-like design site Vot.eti.me which is a product of the ever popular Styl.eti.me If you haven’t seen vot.eti.me yet, go check it out. Now, the reason I am writing this post on the blog is to let you know that I’ve updated the sociable plug-in which was originally created by Peter Harkins and maintained by Joost de Valk since early 2008. The plug-in now not only includes vot.eti.me in the options panel, but it also makes it one of the default options. The original had the following as the default options:

Digg
Sphinn
Del.icio.us
Facebook
Mixx
Google

For those of us who design for a living or run design blogs, I know that there should be some better default options built into the plug-in to better suit our target visitor. So now the plug-in is defaulted to show the following:

Vot.eti.me
Stumbleupon
Design Float
Del.icio.us
Digg
Twit This
Email

If you think that the plug-in should be defaulted with any others, let me know and I’ll update it here. You can download the plug-in zip file below. Any questions/comments/tips leave me a comment and let me know.

DOWNLOAD NOW:
Download the updated Sociable Plugin