After many weeks of hellish labor, Perishable Press is redesigned with some significant changes to the main structure of the site. Before the 2011 renovation, the site operated from a subdirectory WordPress installation in the following location:

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Just a note that PerishablePress.com will be migrating to its new home at Media Temple. Thanks for your patience as the DNS propagates. If you encounter anything seriously weird, like unexpected errors or anything, please comment on this post or send an email. As always, thank you for your help.

Okay – here goes nothin’!

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New design in effect at Perishable Press. It’s sort of a hybrid between some of the things I like about the Quintessential theme and some of the best parts of the subsequent Requiem theme. So this new theme is named Serious because it represents a renewed commitment to design, blogging, and everything I love about working on the Web. While I have everything fresh in my mind, here are some of the highlights of the latest incarnation of Perishable Press..

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Happy Halloween!

This year, I thought it would be fun to dress up my site with one of its very first themes. The Lithium theme remains one of my favorites, despite some of the scary code used in a few of the template files. Even so, despite its relative simplicty, this theme features some great little details, and even features some stylish quicktags in the comments area. Incidentally, the Perishable Press logo was designed specifically for the Lithium theme way back in 2006.

So enjoy this blast from the past! Hopefully it doesn’t scare anyone too badly..

Note: Thanks to Chris Coyier for the spooky Halloween-theme idea :)

Another note: To use a different theme, check out the theme library.

Time flies! Perishable Press celebrates its fourth year online during this Fall season. Not really sure what that means at this point, other than a lot of hard work, plenty of great conversation, and a ton of design-related content. How did I get here? Let’s take a brisk stroll down memory lane..

During the site’s first year, I remember being too excited for my own good. WordPress was relatively new and I was completely inspired by the amazing things I could do with it. I spent most of my time building all sorts of different themes, studying web design, and posting useful code snippets. During this first year, Perishable Press was virtually unknown. Late night hours were spent drenched in CSS, (X)HTML, and PHP.

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It’s been awhile since I have taken some time to just blog a little bit about what’s been happening in this crazy little world of mine. Normally, I like to keep my articles focused on web design, social media, and other online topics, but every now and then I like to take some time out and share some personal news. Needless to say, lots of awesome stuff has been happening both online and in my personal life, so here’s a brief summary for the sake of prosperity. I’ll start with the personal drama and then hit the online/design and project-related news.

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In celebration of CSS Naked Day, Perishable Press has disabled it’s CSS stylesheet for today, April 9th, 2009 (which also happens to be my 37th birthday)!

What are you waiting for? Go get naked!! ;)

Yet another fine reason to celebrate the current Quintessential theme design here at Perishable Press is graciously provided by the fine folks at CSS Perk. CSS Perk features a growing collection of superior CSS-designed websites, and is always a great source of inspiration and ideas for new design projects.

Seeing my current theme showcased at CSS Perk is very inspiring, and a super-cool way to celebrate my upcoming April-9th birthday. Many thanks to the awesome peeps at CSS Perk for sharing Perishable Press with their audience — it is greatly appreciated! :)

So what are you waiting for! Go check it out and kick this old hard-working dog a few stars! ;)

Due to popular demand, I will be switching the site’s default theme back to the colorful Quintessential theme (opens new tab or window). Many people simply felt that the extreme minimalism of the new Requiem theme (opens new tab or window) was just too “plain” or otherwise difficult to navigate due to the single-column design. So, after giving it a go and receiving some excellent feedback, Perishable Press will be rolling with the Quintessential theme — at least for now.. ;)

Those of you who prefer the straightforward usability and minimalist design aesthetic of the new Requiem theme may continue to use it during your visits to Perishable Press. Either click here for Requiem (opens new tab or window), or otherwise scroll down to the footer of the default Quintessential theme to the “Switch Themes” links. Additionally, for the more adventurous surfers out there, you may choose to skin the site with any of my 18 available themes.

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As you may know, Perishable Press was redesigned only several months ago. As much as I enjoy the transparent imagery of the Quintessential theme (opens new window or tab), I find it too distracting and complicated for everyday use.

So I have redesigned, yet again. The new theme is called “Requiem” (opens new window or tab) and is return to my minimalist roots (opens new window or tab). There is something calming and yet energizing about working with a streamlined, no-fuss interface, especially when you are extremely busy. The new theme was completed in December of last year, and I have been using it behind the scenes ever since.

Now I want to know what you think about the new design. Is it an improvement over the previous, more colorful theme? I will be taking your feedback into consideration when deciding whether or not to keep the new “Requiem” theme as the default. Let me know your thoughts! Thanks :)

Go here for a complete list of available themes.

Sometimes I just need to type. To get it out. Small ideas, news, and other mental slices of personal relevance. If this just “ain’t your thing,” by all means, please move on to the next item in your reader. Otherwise, if I may ramble on for a moment with the privileged luxury of your gracious attention, I will attempt to elaborate a few of the recent mysteries swirling throughout the rushing vortex that is my life.

First of all, the site is doing great. I am honored that you have found Perishable Press worthy of your consideration, consumption, and contemplation. Your time is extremely valuable, so I am most grateful that you have chosen to include me in your current stream of consciousness. As the site continues to evolve, I hope the silent majority will decide to reach out and say hello, drop some insight, or even some criticism. After all, “dialogue” is the second part of the site’s official tagline. <smile>

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Yay! Perishable Press is now featured at one of my favorite CSS-design showcase sites, Divine CSS! Divine CSS features a mouth-watering collection of CSS and Flash-based website designs, and is always a great source of inspiration and ideas for new projects. Seeing my current theme (Quintessential) showcased at Divine CSS is very inspiring, and a nice way to celebrate the (relatively) new design. Many thanks to the fine folks at Divine CSS for sharing my site with their audience — it is greatly appreciated! :)

So what are you waiting for! Go check it out (while it’s still on the front page) and kick this old hard-working dog a few stars! ;)

Perishable Press is three years old! I first launched the site during August/September of 2005 using the cutting-edge B2-Evolution blogging engine. Admittedly, for the first year or so, I had no idea what I was doing, but was having a blast absorbing and applying as much design-related information as I could find.

At first, Perishable Press was nothing more than a virtual workshop, a learning tool, and a place to dump notes and ideas. I greatly enjoyed working on the site, and soon found myself hooked on standards-based web design. I began reading every web-design and development book I could get my hands on. I subscribed to all the popular web-design and blogging sites, and spent endless hours reading in-depth tutorials, tips and tricks.

Fortunately, after a few weeks of intense study, I realized that WordPress would probably be a better platform choice than B2-Evolution for customization and development purposes. After making the switch, I began designing theme after theme, studying different techniques, crafting my own solutions, and posting information for future reference.

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First of all, thank you to everyone who provided screenshots, feedback, and ideas for the new design. Your help is highly valued and greatly appreciated. From what I am hearing, the redesign seems to have been well-received, with many readers and visitors taking the time to leave a comment, send a screenshot, or email a message. As hoped, people seem to enjoy the vibrant colors, the translucent panels, and the fancy sliding menus.

Other people have pointed out the site’s oversize width. On screens that are 1024 pixels (or less) in width, the design triggers the hideous horizontal scrollbar. Using a 1024-pixel width was a conscious decision based on sound statistical information and a desire to maximize screen area. Based on my statistics, approximately 85% of visitors view the site through a monitor that is greater than 1024 pixels in width:

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One of my goals for the new Perishable Press redesign was to achieve cross-browser, pixel-perfect precision [ ¹ ]. Of course, due to many variables (platform, operating system, browser, extensions, fonts, etc.), it is virtually impossible to achieve complete 100% perfection, but I am certainly interested in examining the design on as many different configurations as possible. Thus, last week after launching the new design, I made an open call for screenshots. Graciously, many of you responded with some great screenshots. Thanks to you, I was able to see Perishable Press “in the wild” on many operating systems and browsers to which I simply don’t have access. Sure, I could have just went to browsershots.com or some similar service, but as Rick Beckman correctly pointed out, it is much more fun to get everyone involved in the process. So without further ado, here is the Perishable Press Quintessential Screenshot Gallery:

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Quick announcement that I will be posting an article featuring a diverse screenshot gallery of the new design. To accomplish this, I need screenshots from as many different operating systems and browsers as possible. Currently, I have access to the following browsers:

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New design in effect at Perishable Press. With this 17th incarnation of the site, I drew heavily upon psychedelic influences, spiked it with the essence of the previous dark minimalist theme, and mixed in a healthy dose of cutting-edge JavaScript and PHP functionality.

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