Archive for January, 2010
The Bad Feather WordPress Maintenance Spiel
Sweet. You have an awesome, powerful WordPress site that allows you to add and edit content like a crazy web superhero. But as Spidey’s story reminds us, “With great power comes great responsibility.”
WordPress is a complicated machine – a database that organizes, archives and serves up everything you throw at it. Like any other machine, it requires regular attention to make sure it continues to function properly. To continue with the superhero motif, the web has many a super-villain that one must be diligent to thwart; hackers, worms and server crashes, oh my.
In the event of a catastrophe, is your site safe and prepared? Is your data regularly backed up, are your versions up to date and is everything running smoothly? If your site crashed, are you sitting pretty with the knowledge that you can restore the entire site in a few clicks? If so, carry on, soldier. If not, keep reading… Read the rest of this entry »
A Case of Holiday Madness
The activity level at Bad Feather HQ during the month of December can best be described as elfin. Handmade activity was at an all-time high, as we all abandoned our computers and dedicated all resources to making, baking and packing for the holidays.
Some time ago we decided buttons would be the perfect holiday goody and so, this Fall we set to work designing buttons and buttons and buttons until we selected the 20 best (the 2009 holiday edition, if you will). During the first week of December, while Brad and Heather headed to Miami for a dose of art and sun (did we mention we brought back a hambone and mustache cream as souvenirs?), the ladies of Bad Feather held down the fort and made a mound of nearly a thousand buttons.
The second week of December we decided it was time to explore our stop-motion curiosity, because of course a video is the perfect way to send a holiday message to the world. We created a quick storyboard and began cutting and taping a forest worth of paper feather trees. For the next two weeks we slowly crafted our set, including an ice skating pond and airplane. In retrospect, the hours of photographing and editing that followed were nothing…
And then there was the question of what to give to our friends and family? Cookies of course! One week before Christmas we all headed home to our respective kitchens with many pounds of sugar, butter and all those ingredients that make the word a better place. We returned the next morning each with dozens of dozens of cookies, of which we ate quite a few.
And so we packed, we labeled and we mailed. We battled the local post office which twice returned our button packages (the second time on Christmas Eve!). We designed, we edited, we emailed and eventually we all headed off (just a bit exhausted) to our respective holiday activities. Perhaps we took on too much, but it sure was fun. Thanks to all who have since sent us thanks and compliments – we hope you ate your cookies, are proudly wearing some very bad buttons, and that all enjoyed our holiday video experiment. Happy New Year!
Have you heard 2010 is the year of the Bad Feather?
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