Updates

February 3rd

Hello, and welcome back to the Canvas! I took the site offline a few months ago, but after a tiring amount of work, we’re back up and running. A great deal of time has gone into the development of this current iteration, and I’ve taken precautions to avoid the pitfalls that plagued the original Canvas.

I thought instead of the usual first “Hello World!” type post, I’d go over a brief history of the Canvas, what mistakes I learned from, what changes I’ve made, and my overall mission statement.

A Brief History

I first registered this domain on my birthday, roughly 3 years ago. I had planned to use it as my personal playground to learn web design and development. At the time I was involved in quite a few forums, and decided to try my hand at running a community. The Canvas went through 3 “major” versions, even having an eCommerce component at one time.

Ultimately, I couldn’t decide what the Canvas wanted to be, and this indecisiveness was taking it’s toll on the source files of the forum. I was editing the core files directly, under the default theme, which made upgrading the forum almost impossible. Security was a joke, and bots were wreaking havoc in my error logs.

Over time, I grew disheartened with the site as a whole. We had collected a handful of active, and ultimately useful users, but failed to attract more than this core 4 or 5. I started working on side projects, and I spent most of my time learning, improving. I made a mental checklist of what I considered the three major faults:

1. Low, untargeted traffic. Relied on passive inbound links.
2. Lack of web standards, and poor code practices overall.
3. A complete lack of focus or direction for the site as a whole.

So What’s Changed?

This latest version of the site was developed from the ground up. I created a simple template file system, then integrated it with the site software. Currently we’re running a mashup of SMF and Wordpress, and a major goal of mine was to have everything feel more integrated and smooth. Your login works across everywhere in the site. When commenting on the blog, your user data is used, while guests can still comment freely with a name and Email.

I didn’t want the forum to be buried ‘behind’ the main site. One of the first things I added was the ability t Spotlight any user’s posts, bringing the topic into wordpress, and adding it seamlessly to the rest of the blog. If you wrote a great post, tutorial, or even showcase, don’t be surprised to have it featured.

I’ve also worked in a basic twitter live stream, used randomly throughout the site in an unobtrusive way. Found a great article, resource, or news snippet? Simply tag your tweet with our hashtag: #thecanvas and share it with the whole community!

Mission Statement

As creative individuals, we all have some area of expertise. We fancy ourselves artists, musicians, developers, experts in our fields. However we are not accountants, marketers, or salesmen. But we need to be. I know most of us never learned how to set up a website, run a portfolio, or prepare a graphic for print, because they weren’t in your curriculum, book, or website.

There are so many things we as individuals need to master in addition to our artistic skillsets, in order to be successful. Sure, there will be a fair share of news, freebies, roundups, and general design news, but the core of this site is dedicated to helping you down your chosen path. In short, The Canvas is dedicated to artistic freelancers trying to get a foot hold in the industry.

Wheeeeww!

Finally I’d like to ask a favor of all of you. Are you a Photoshop master? InDesign Guru? Sculptor extraordinaire? Let us know! Leave a shiny comment with your area of chosen mastery. I look forward to meeting all of you!

Author

Brandon Diaz is the creator of The Corrupted Canvas. He's a web designer with a pretty severe caffeine addiction. He's avid about many things including web standards, web development, various teas, and game design. If you'd like to get in touch you can find him on Twitter.