WordPress and Web Development › home of Ben Gillbanks
General child categories : Art Direction, Competition, Miniclip, Personal Development and Travel
My first website was terrible. Not intentionally I hasten to add - but because I was told to make it bad... I started university in 1998, the internet was just starting to become more mainstream. It was still a few years before the first dot-com bubble burst - and AOL were still sending everyone copious amounts of drinks mats (trial cds). I was studying digital art - I wanted to be a video games artist - but web design was [...]
Over the winter holiday break I did a bit of a splurge on Pro Theme Design and posted a bunch of blog posts about WordPress and blogging. This is something I want to do a lot more of as I think it benefits my website users quite nicely. Below is a selection of the blog posts I think are most interesting. What's coming up in WordPress - I find it really interesting seeing the direction WordPress is heading in. The [...]
The web industry moves really fast and there is always a lot to do - time is precious. Many of us get dozens - sometimes even hundreds - of emails a day. As such it can be quite frustrating to get emails from people who introduce themselves and say they want to talk to you - and then don't tell me what they want. Recently I have been contacted by two independent companies - both wanting to talk about one [...]
So - in November I decided to grow my beard in aid of Bowel Cancer Research. Unfortunately I got very few donations, my 'awesome' plan to tweet photos of the beard growing process did little (literally nothing in fact) to encourage any of my Twitter followers to donate to me. Regardless, at the end of the month I had a nice lustrous (scraggly unkempt) beard. As I suggested when I started the thing - I have now created an animated [...]
When I was 13 I saw Toy Story at the cinema - and I instantly knew that 3d art was what I wanted to do. I had always been a doodler - I liked drawing cartoons and inventing things. I was also a lover of computers - so seeing Toy Story, discovering that I could combine the things I enjoyed the most (and get paid for it!) - I knew what I wanted to do. So, everything from then on [...]
I have a beard. A few months after I met Jo, who is now my wife, she said that she thought I looked good with a beard. Since this meant I didn't have to shave, and since it got the thumbs up from my new girlfriend, I decided to start growing it. So I now have a beard. Every year, Miniclip, the company I work for join in with Movember. This is a charity event where men around the world [...]
I found the reactions after the iPhone 5 announcement last week really interesting. Everyone knew the iPhone 5 was coming, and all the rumour blogs had announced almost everything presented. Before it started we knew many of the announcements. So why was the outcome so negative? The iPhone 5 pre-orders sold out within some sort of crazy record (24 hours or something), yet there was a lot of negativity. People had set their expectations too high (despite the fact we [...]
I moved house last year and we've slowly been going through the boxes of junk weeding out the rubbish when, a couple of days ago, I found my old video game art portfolio. I must have made this in 2002/ 2003 - it was the portfolio cd I was sending to games companies that showcased my work as a 3d artist. In fact these were part of the same portfolio that got me a job at Miniclip where I still [...]
I always like to challenge myself. I generally go for mental challenges, trying new technologies and coming up with new ideas. I feel that it's the best way to learn and expand my mind - however I tend not to challenge myself physically. I'm a geek - I like to sit in front of a computer or a tv and play video games or browse the internet - but I also enjoy the outdoor life. Last year I bought a [...]
I am in the process of working out a redesign for my site. The redesign will focus on building more of a community feel, and making the site more personal - in short focusing on what the you want rather than what I want. Some of the things I plan to add include recent comments, popular posts (based upon comments), and ... a link list. I have already started creating [...]
On Monday I started a giveaway to get Fast and Furious free on iTunes movie. Today I am giving away an iPod Nano to watch it on! To celebrate Halloween Universal are reducing the price of some spooky movies on iTunes to £3.99 - and because I am awesome they have given me a shiny new iPod Nano (the new type with a camera) to give away. You can watch [...]
I have been rather quiet on the blogging front recently and there have been two reasons for this. Number 1 - well... see the title of this post, and number 2? I'll explain that one in a week or so. Anyway a couple of weeks ago (10th of July 2006) the new Miniclip website was released. For those who don't know Miniclip is the company I work for, as a [...]
I recently had someone email me and ask what a day in my life, or that of a web designer, was like. A slightly unusual request but I thought I would take up the challenge and document an average day. I don't mention it very often so I am not sure how many people realise I have a full time job. The websites I run I work on around the [...]
Part of getting my iPod Touch is that I get to download movies by Universal from iTunes which is great - but I want to spread the love. The latest film I was given is Fast and Furious - a sequel to a film with a ridiculously similar name (which I guess is a conversation for another post). The film is a return to its roots (hence the similar name) [...]
I have recently published my first 'Art Directed' posts on Binary Moon - namely my reviews for the movies Coraline and Up. Ever since I saw Jason Santa Marias art directed site the idea has brewed in my head that I would do something similar, so when I redesigned I kept that wish in the back of my mind so that new designs could be slotted in easily. What is [...]