Two of my good friends, Heather and Firrend, have finally decided to tie the knot after dating for nearly a decade. For a wedding gift, I offered to create their wedding site which was a deal for me because I’ve been itching to make a wedding site for awhile now.

Why would I want to create a wedding site? They’re simple and straight to the point. I like that. My goal was to design a site that’s super to easy to read for the bride and groom’s older relatives, but would also look great on their 20-something-year-old friends who would be seeing the site on their iPhone. This layout with it’s large images and text achieved both.

Visit Heather & Firrend’s Wedding Site here.

New name, same easy-to-use service.

Luke and I created Goaliant over a year ago. Since then we have created a small user base… a very small user base. I’m not surprised by this because, honestly, we didn’t try very hard to acquire users. We both work full time and we’re not marketing gurus/ninjas/rockstars, we just like to make stuff. The majority of our users were friends or people that we were able to get to join when using those free $100 Adwords giftcards that Google sends to people.

What really bothered me was the lack of organic traffic. There was hardly any at all. Aside from the lack of pages that our non-existent user base weren’t creating, no one was searching for “Goaliant”. The name is not only bad, it’s not even a word. This might be ok for companies like Twitter, Tumblr, or Dribbble, but we need a little help on the marketing side. This means making the site easy to find and coming up with a name that describes exactly what the service is. “Goaliant” achieves neither of these goals. (See what I did there? It’s a blog post about a goal tracking site.)

So, we’re giving Track a Goal a go. I think it’ll help potential users find the site and it tells the potential user exactly what the site is.

Hopefully everyone will know that you can track more than one goal… look forward to my next blog post, “Track a Goal” is now “Track Multiple Goals”.

Visit Track a Goal website here.

I’ve been working with my friend and frequent collaborator, Luke Stebner, on yet another project. This time it’s a game review site named 10 Dollar Gaming.

Luke has always been passionate about gaming and created 10 Dollar Gaming nearly 2 years ago as a way for him to help indie gamers get noticed. The name came from indie games typically costing less than $10.

On Feb 5 2012, Luke moved the site off of the WordPress platform and on to his lightweight Node.js blogging platform, Bearblog (which I also helped with). I took this opportunity to revamp the look and feel of the site and help him out with SEO.

Since then the site’s traffic has doubled, the single ad we placed on the site is performing well, and Luke has been reviewing games like mad. I’ve even started to contribute game reviews, that’s saying a lot for someone who isn’t a hardcore gamer.

I think the opportunity for this site to grow is huge. iOS and Android games own nearly 60% of the portable game market and will only continue to grow. This makes reviewing games that cost less than $10 a snap since iOS and Android games rarely cost more than a couple dollars (most only cost $.99).

We’re continuing to work on the look and feel of the site, but I’m happy with the progress we’ve made in such a short time. Soon there will more ways for users to learn about the games they love and will be able to interact with other indie game fans.

Follow @10DollarGaming on Twitter.

Yesterday I updated my portfolio with some design work I did for Parknear.me.

Parknear.me was (and still may be) a service that allows you to rent out vacant lots on your property to those that need parking in your area. The idea was conceived by my friend and former co-worker, Tom Hill. Tom, myself and a couple other friends started the process of building the site, but we have since become busy with our full-time jobs and life in general.

While it looks like the project will be on the back burners indefinitely, I’m still proud of the work I did so I wanted to at least share my homepage design.

I understand that Twitter wants the #NewNewTwitter UI to be easier for the average user to use and understand, but can I please get a “Retweets” button on the Connect view?

I’m just as lazy as I am vain and having to comb through my interactions to see who has retweeted me is a pain.

It’s simple, really simple, but if you’re a programmer in need of a incredibly lightweight blog that looks good then you’re in luck.

You can learn more about Bearblog on Github: https://github.com/lstebner/bearblog

On a typical day, there’s usually only 2-4 people in the office, but today most of the team is in the office (including an employee who lives in NJ).

I’ve enjoyed updating my Tumblr with random photos and videos that I’ve come across, but I don’t feel like it’s the proper place to post my thoughts on design, technology, and whatever else I feel like ranting about. Don’t expect any 8-page editorials from me though.