Ron Shiver

Many of you may have noticed that I have not been around much over the past several days. I apologize if you have tried to get in touch with me, as I have not responded to e-mails, Tweets, etc since Saturday night.

My father unexpectedly passed away Sunday morning. After going to sleep Sunday around midnight, he had two consecutive heart attacks in his sleep. He was only 52.

At approximately 6:45 am on Sunday a Sheriffs Deputy phoned me and told me I needed to get to my parent's house as soon as possible, but would not give me any details. Upon arriving the deputy let me know me father had passed away and then led me into the house where I found my mother in tears. I've never seen my mother or sister cry so hard in my life. The strangest thing is that until I phoned Liz I had been unable to cry. As soon as I actually had to say aloud that he had passed away I began to cry uncontrollably. Almost as if saying those words finally made it true.

Due to the fact that he was young and had no previous health problems the medical examiner was required to do an autopsy. That and the holiday caused us to be unable to make funeral arrangements until Wednesday and for the services to be pushed back until this coming Sunday.

This week has been one of the most horrible experiences of my life, thus far. If not for Liz, and my sister's boyfriend, Patrick, I do not know how we would have made it this far. While there are still tough times ahead I wanted to take a moment to get online and let everyone know why I have been absent, and will be for a while longer.

I will miss my father very much. I already do. He was one of the nicest guys you'd ever want to have met. He had a big heart and a kind soul. He would do anything for you, and if he liked you you were sure to be teased and picked on. The world lost a wonderful man, and an amazing father and husband on December 23, 2007.

Holiday time

The elixir crew will be taking a short holiday break beginning on Friday. We'll be back and at full-steam come December 28. I will definitely be checking in on support queries between now and the 28th, but the will be a noticeable difference in our response time from normal. I will try to jump on any 'emergency' support problems that might crop up though over the next week.

If you've filed a bug report or problem already, be assured that I am still looking into them and working on them, we just need a little downtime to spend with family and friends.

On our way out of the proverbial door for the holidays I will leave you with these quick updates:

• Our next icon pack currently contains 180 icons, and is still growing.
• We have a new theme that is about midway to completion.
• There are a couple of other 'secret' projects that are in the works that should start cropping up in the first month or so of the new year.

Hope everyone is having a great holiday thus far.

A whole new world

posted by Liz



If any of you have some extra cash burning a hole in your pocket after the holidays and are fellow Floridians (or feel like traveling to a warmer climate), you should looking into attending Photoshop World. The seminar is April 2-4, right here in Orlando.

I'll give it to you straight: It's not cheap. But based on the one day Adam and I spent at the Photoshop CS3 Power Tour with Dave Cross, I'm betting this little soiree is more than worth the cost, especially if you run your own business or do much freelance graphics work. You can save $100 on the event if ...

1. You're a NAPP member. (Non-member registration fee includes NAPP membership.)
2. You register before Feb. 29. (That's right, it's a leap year!)

I won't give away all the details. Check it out for yourselves. Or better yet, add it to your Christmas wishlist!

Artsy Fartsy

posted by Liz

Okay, I'm trying to get back on the ball with things after moving and getting sick for so long. I've started delving back into some projects I'd put off for a while and thought I'd post a couple of links for you all to check out.

The first is a little history on the color wheel for those of us who are art geeks. The second is for those of us who are ... well ... just plain geeks.

Hope you enjoy!

Spread the word

posted by Adam

After you have developed your site with RapidWeaver and populated it with all of your amazing content, how do you get the word out to the rest of the internet?

Well, there's always Google and Yahoo!, which will eventually index your site and allow people to find it via their search engines. But there are other ways to let people know about your site as well.

Website showcases
While website design showcases are great for getting inspired by others' designs and following the trends across the web, they're also very helpful in driving traffic to your website. If your site is chosen for their showcases they can often bring a lot of extra visitors to your site. Some of the most popular website showcases are:

• Webcreme
• CSSTux
• FaveUp
• CSSRemix
• Light on Dark
• Design Meltdown
• CSS Container

Also to be mentioned is a newly relaunched RadpiWeaved.com. The site features only RapidWeaver built sites, and also plays host to a blog written and maintained by RapidWeaver users.

3, 2, 1, launch!
Another service that makes it easy to get the word out about your brand-new, RapidWeaver-built site is LaunchFeed. LaunchFeed allows you to submit your newly created site, allowing a plethora of different people to take notice, both on the LaunchFeed site and through RSS feeds.

Leave comments
Most blogs and forums allow you to sign your posts with a signature or some sort. Be sure to include some sort of link to your new site in this signature. Then when you post on various forums, or leave comments on blogs you frequent others have the opportunity to visit your site. This is however not an open invitation to spam these two mediums. Don't post more than your normally would, or chime in with one line posts just in an effort to promote your site. This will do nothing more than alienate you in these venues and discourage people from visiting your new site.

Get some feedback
The Realmac Software forums are a great way to get some help when you're designing your new RapidWeaver-built site. But did you know that the forum is a good way to some attention as well as constructive criticism and comments? The folks over at Realmac Software have setup a critiques and comments forum to allow other RapidWeaver users, experts and novices alike, to check out your site and give you feedback in an effort to help polish your site.

While there are even more ways to publicize your site and get those first visitors, who will hopefully spread the word, these are a few of the easiest ways to get the ball rolling.

A nasty virus

posted by Adam

I wanted to take a minute to post and let everyone know that Liz and I have not dropped off the face of the Earth. We actually both got a nasty virus. Of the human, not computer variety. We've had a pretty rough couple of weeks. While we're both still not well, I think we're at least on the mend.

I am in the process of catching up on all of my e-mail. There is a ton of it but I promise to get through it all as quickly as possible.

We've got some really cool things in the works, so bear with us as we medicate and get some rest. Hopefully we'll be back up to full-speed soon!