For months now I, along with the others I work with at my day job, have had to undergo a lot of stress. For sometime those in charge at the place I work have been holding layoffs over our heads and the stress has been mounting for each of us. They’d not decided who was to get laid off until just last week, and they still do not plan to release the names of those people until next week. Needless to say it has been a rough time.

Last week however my boss, the editor of the Sports section of the paper, told us that he’d finally heard who was on the final list, and that if we’d like to know earlier than next week we could come in and speak with him. Seems that I am on that list of people. So, even though I’ve not officially been let go from the newspaper as of yet, I have taken this week and part of next as vacation time to get some elixir work completed.

If that long list of layoffs does not change over the next week I will let you all know. If I am in fact let go though you should see a lot more great stuff from elixir and its sister sites.

Just a quick couple of changes to the site— I’ve fixed a wrong link in the RSS feed in the sidebar the left. You can read our blog via that RSS feed or subscribe via Feedburner.

I also added the Skinny Series of themes back to the theme listing page. I’d mistakenly left it out, even though Paper and Plastic are both available and come in the Ultimate bundle.

I’ve also styled up the Comments pop-up window a bit to dress things up to match the new site design. Click on the Comments link at the end of this post to check it out. Let me know what you think.

Don’t forget to check out our sale.

Tags: elixir, Fixes

I would first like to apologize that it has been quiet around here as of late. The reason may seem obvious now, but it is because we’ve been working to redesign the entire elixir site from the ground up, create a new theme and much, much more.

I'll cover some of the new areas of the site and new theme below. I would love to hear your thoughts on the new site as well and if there are any areas where you think we could improve upon it.

Before I jump into the site redesign, I’d like to introduce you to our latest theme, Candy—

Mmmm... tasty!
Candy is a highly flexible, super stylish RapidWeaver theme, with a gooey, tasty center.

OK, maybe it doesn't have a gooey center, but it is a theme that is perfect for creating a website for a small business, portfolio, blog, photo album and much more.

Candy offers 38 built-in headers, some great sidebar features and more. Drop by the product page to get an in-depth list of all that Candy has to offer.

You can also checkout a live preview site to see it in action.

We're also offering some add-on headers for this new theme, so be sure to check out our new Extras section.


A new home

We figured it was time to spruce up the elixir site a bit, and what better time to do so than when we're releasing a new theme, along with some other goodies.

Our new site features not only an updated look, but also updated content. Our landing page has been further simplified and our interior pages have been expanded. All of our theme product pages were updated to be more stylish and to add more detailed descriptions of the themes as well as extra screenshots.

We've also updated our Help Desk to be more friendly and easy to use.


More goodies
We've added a lot of other new goodies. Some of which include a new set of Collage 2 Styles, Carousel Styles, and Mac and iPhone wallpapers. In addition to our company blog (which you’re reading) I've also added a personal, tumblr blog to post links, photos, quotes and much more.

We've also added a new portfolio section showcasing some of our custom work for clients.


A work in progress
While we're pretty satisfied with the new site, we're always looking for your feedback on how it can be better. If you think of something we should add to the site or something we don't need, or just a better way to do it, let me know via our contact form.


Freebies
Along with adding a new theme to the site we've also taken one of our more popular, classic themes and made it completely free. If you don't already own it, stop by the Ribbon page and download it today.

We’ve also made our Carousel and Accordion extras completely free as well.


Too much goodness
We've simply added too much to the site to mention it all here, whether it is just a case of refining a page, giving more description, or adding new icons. Enjoy the new site. Share it with all of your friends, whether they're RapidWeaver users or not.


Sign up, get discounts
Don’t forget that we have a great newsletter. Each time we send out our newsletter to subscribers, we include a discount or two. So sign up. It’s free and you get discounts on themes, extras and more. Doesn’t get much better, huh?

Tags: New Theme, Site Update, Redesign, Extras

The mailman delivered my copy of Design Meltdown's The Web Designer's Idea Book just the other day. I ordered a copy to check out all of the amazing site designs as well as to see the spots where elixir sites were listed.

I originally thought our sites would merely be shown as thumbnails, like most sites in the book, and didn't expect much more. Boy, was I surprised! Not only did elixir and CSStux make it into the book, but both were touted in the introductions to their respective chapters. The elixir site leads off the Icons section on pages 172-173 and CSStux begins the chapter relating to Shine on pages 205-206. You can also find a site we created long ago for Todd Albertson on page 24.

I was very honored by Patrick's kind words.

One of the funny but great things, I thought, was that on the same pages that list and tout elixir, the e-junkie site is listed. Patrick compares elixir's use of icons to that of e-junkie's. What's great is I designed them both.

The Web Designer's Idea Book is a great book and a must-have for designers looking for a lot of inspiration.

Tags: Design, Ideas, Web

We do a lot of things here at elixir — Stock and custom RapidWeaver themes, icon and logo design, website development, and now even homework. OK, we don't do homework, but we help!

One of our customers e-mailed us the other day to ask a question. In his e-mail he also included this anecdote that made use smile. I asked him if we could share it with you all and he kindly obliged:

From Robert:

I bought one of your themes — Elements — the day I bought Rapidweaver. My 10 year old son announced he had a major project on space to deliver for school — "Just a written report, film or presentation" he said. He had done virtually nothing in three weeks and it needed to be in the next morning! Neither of us had ever designed a website in our lives, but after seeing your theme, I risked it, we downloaded RW and your theme, learned how to use it in an afternoon and completed the project on space shuttles as a website just a few hours later, thanks to you and the folks at RW. It really was a cinch to use even for a ten year old. My only disappointment was that he only got a B [on the project] — but at least it was better than the fail he would have been heading for with no project.

Reading this e-mail from Robert truly made me smile. I'm very happy that we could help out, without even knowing it. It also shows how quick anyone can pickup RapidWeaver and start learning it.

I'd not mentioned this to Robert yet, and wanted to wait until this blog post went up, but we've sent he and his son some other themes. Just in case he might have some other school projects to work on. ;-)

Tags: elixir, Themes

Did you see that? No?! Too quick for you, huh?

Well, let me tell you what just happened. Within the span of about an hour and a half we successfully migrated one of our sister sites, CSStux, over to DreamHost as well. So painless. So quick. It is just extraordinary!

Just a few more projects to transfer over now....

Tags: Hosting, Server, CSStux

What had become a week-long nightmare ended up as a dream today.

I have been battling problems with my web host and domain registrar for about a week now. What started as a few slow loading pages blossomed into entire areas of the site simply not loading. When I contacted my provider, GoDaddy, to gain a bit of assistance they told me: 'The problem has been resolved and if you have further problems, let us know.'

Great, I thought. I like it when people help me solve my problems. But unfortunately it was not true. I went back and forth a few times and even involved John over at Loghound at one point to help me figure things out. But alas it all pointed back to GoDaddy. Funny thing is they kept repeating their mantra: 'Everything is fine. Nothing is wrong.'

Well, I couldn't take their lack of help any longer. So I packed my bags and headed for a better host. Upon John's recommendation I checked out DreamHost. And let me tell you what, these guys are very helpful and quick. They didn't let my e-mails go unanswered or take 8 hours to return them, as GoDaddy did.

Within the day they had everything up and running and everything is back to normal. Funny thing is, I didn't change my coding at all. Everything, code-wise, is and was working fine. Come to find out, it was a GoDaddy problem. Go figure.

If you're looking for a host or just a domain registrar, I would highly recommend DreamHost. But, no matter who you go with, just say NoDaddy.

We will be moving CSStux and a few of our other projects over to DreamHost, from GoDaddy, early next week when our schedule becomes a little more freed up.

Tags: Hosting, elixir, Server

So I opened up Mint today to find that our daily page views tally had gone through the roof. And this was at noon. Since then we have had a huge influx of visits from CSSRemix, WebCreme, CSS Container and CSS Import. It seems we were picked up by some of the major CSS showcase sites.

I feel very, very honored.

I would encourage all of you to stop by these sites, as well as some of the others listed on our resources page.