Freebie Friday: Siena Icon Set

For this week’s Freebie, I’ve chosen Siena, a slick set of 200 free icons compliments of Webdesigner Depot.

Webdesigner Depot is one of my all time favorite sites. Not only are they giving this set away for free, heck they even give you 6 different rasterized sizes AND the vector files for every single one of them. Now THAT is something to be excited about.

siena_icons

Go get yours right now! You will have to subscribe to their RSS feed in order to get the password, but hey, what’s a couple of extra clicks for this sweet looking set?

Freebie Friday: Whiteboard Modern Font

I love a good font. In fact those who know me probably consider me a font-a-holic, but I guess it is just the designer in me. Nevertheless the only thing better than a good font is one that is good AND free.

I stumbled upon the free Whiteboard Modern font from BittBox and quite like it a lot so I thought I’d share the link with you.

Image provided by bittbox

Image by bittbox

Happy downloading!

A New (Unofficial) Arrival, Broken Promises, and Getting the Help You Need

I would like to welcome our newest addition to the Signature Worx team. Mackenzie Calin McVicker, who is no longer “in the worx”, was born on Monday, March 30th at 3:20 pm weighing in at 7 lbs. 15 oz and measuring 20 1/2 inches long. She is doing fabulous…other than not letting her mommy get much sleep. Mackenzie enjoys instrumental lullabies and long strolls in the neighborhood.

img_2922Here’s a picture of her…isn’t she just the cutest thing? Of course I am a little partial, so just agree with this new again mommy please! I live on coffee these days. In fact there is very little food because I simply forget to eat! Of course I never forget to feed Mackenzie which explains the pudgy little cheeks!

I would have posted one of the professional photos that were taken of her at the hospital, but unfortunately I don’t have any. Yes, my baby is 7 weeks old today and I still don’t have her photos, nor do I have her birth announcements. I just don’t feel like it is official until a birth announcement has been sent you know?

So this is the story of the seemingly overworked, over exhausted and over extended photographer. After not receiving my proofs in the hospital the next day as promised, it took me two weeks to even get her on the phone after leaving multiple voicemails and emails. She was nice, apologetic, and even threw in a few extras to my order for my trouble. She also went beyond that and said she would rush my order and I would have it in about a week as opposed to her normal 4-6 week turnaround time.

Unfortunately it is 5 weeks later and I still have NO photos or birth announcements! I called and emailed her a week ago and finally got a response from her yesterday, via email, but have to say that I’m not totally satisfied with her explanation. I hate to think the worst of people, but in this case I believe I’ve been patient enough. She responded that ’someone’ mailed my photos to me, but that apparently I did not receive them. So she said she will reorder them and they will be back this week.

So, first of all if I actually do receive my order this week, I’ll probably be a little shocked. Ecstatic, but nevertheless shocked. Why? Because it becomes difficult to believe someone when you are consistently promised something that never gets delivered. And when you were promised a rush before and not only didn’t receive it, but didn’t even receive a follow-up or anything, it just becomes even more difficult to trust them. Read more

Google Feeds Gone Wild, Part 2

First of all, I’m back! Did you miss me or didn’t you know I was gone? Either way, I’ve just returned from my short maternity leave after the birth of my second daughter. I’ll be sure to post a special announcement soon, but there is some business to discuss first.

If you subscribe to my blog feed, this may be the first update you have received in ages from In The Worx…that is of course if you solely rely on your RSS reader to keep up with your favorite blogs. Well if that is the case for you, let me apologize. Although I have been away for a few weeks taking care of my new baby, there has apparently been a problem with my feeds since JANUARY!

After having a major hiccup in early March when I was forced to move my FeedBurner feed to my Google account…you can read about that here…I thought this problem had been licked. Apparently not so much. It seems that there has been another issue with my feeds this entire time that I was unaware of until a few weeks ago. Anyone subscribed to my blog through their RSS reader hasn’t seen an update since January 25th. Well rest assured that I have in fact had many posts since then so please catch up as soon as you have a few minutes.

Of course I began researching the problem as soon as I found out.  I scoured the Internet for answers, searched through the FeedBurner knowledgebase and FAQs, and even posted my dilemma on the FeedBurner Google group hoping someone there would be able to help. Not only did I find that people were having similar problems, but they were also getting nowhere and couldn’t get any answers from Google. In fact I was unable to find any kind of support from Google directly.

Now, being the relentless researcher that I am when presented with a problem…seriously I will spend hours and hours if that is what it takes…alas, I finally figured it out! Honestly this was a total fluke that I even found it, but I am so glad that I did because I *pray* that it is the solution for someone else so they too can finally stop searching for answers. So here it is folks:

How To Fix Your FeedBurner Feeds After They Stopped Working

Just by accident, I came across this page on Creating your WordPress feed (self-hosted WordPress) in the FeedBurner Help knowledgebase. Seriously folks, technically this topic has nothing to do with my problem and I just happened upon it by accident. Nothing on this page would have been of value to me, but this one little side note happened to catch me eye. It reads:

Note: If you currently use the old, 2005-vintage version of the Ordered List FeedBurner plugin that generates a FeedBurner-specific URL (an example: www.yoursite.com/feedburner_838196/), that URL is no longer available or necessary. You will have to reset your FeedBurner feed’s Original Feed address to now use your standard blog feed address. Additionally, you should examine any .htaccess files that control access to your WordPress installation’s content and remove any existing references that forward or redirect your feeds, as these references will no longer be necessary.

Hmmm, interesting I thought. I figured what the heck and went to check my Original Feed in FeedBurner. This was such a long shot at best given the fact that I don’t even use the plugin that it is referring to. But guess what? My Original Feed address was exactly in that format. I wondered if changing this would further screw things up, but decided to give it a shot. In fact, at the top of your Feed Details, there is a warning message that reads:

“You should not change “Original Feed” unless you move your original feed to a new domain or a new location on your existing server…”

So first I copied the Original Feed address it was showing and pasted it in Notepad for safe keeping just in case. I retrieved my blog feed address, pasted it in the Original Feed field, and saved it. Then I used the Ping FeedBurner page to ping my site to make sure that it worked. The ping worked so that was a good sign so far.

feedburner-details

Now it was time for the ultimate test. I opened my blog in my browser, clicked on one of my RSS button links and voila! There they were…every post I’ve made since January 25th and prior to that date as well. It was a beautiful thing!

Now let the record show that I DID NOT change my Original Feed address at any time so it had to be changed by FeedBurner because I can’t think of any other explanation. So I’m not sure what Google did in January that would affect my Original Feed address, but I’m sure I wasn’t the only unsuspecting user. Maybe this was when they decided to change our Feed Address to include a ‘2′ (http://feeds2…), which caused millions of headaches, but nevertheless this whole conversion has been a debacle for me.

I hope this information helps solve someone else’s problem with their feeds. As for Google, I said it before…I’ve been a huge fan of many of their apps and offerings, but seriously, what the heck were y’all thinking? Or should I say NOT thinking?

Freebie Friday – DryIcons

Where can you get fantastic, quality designed icon sets? DryIcons.com of course! DryIcons is a great resource with a huge collection of icons and vector graphics available in a variety of sizes and formats – and all for free. They also have great design and development tutorials if that’s your thing.

One of my favorite sets from DryIcons is their Coquette Icons, currently with 200 icons available in a four part series.

dryicons

Check them out here, here, here, and here. But please don’t click until you have some time to kill because I guarantee you’ll be checking out the rest of their offerings for quite a while.

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