Lilac Creative

I normally don't post personal stuff on the Lilac Creative design blog, but some stuff has come up in my personal life that is affecting my work schedule, so I just wanted to give a brief "what's up with me" for anyone who's been wondering. 

The week before last, my husband (who is an officer in the Navy Reserves) received orders to Iraq. While we were prepared for the possibility of him getting called up for active duty, the reality is quite a different thing. Mentally (and spiritually) we are ready to do this, but there are a kajillion practical things that we need to get taken care of before he leaves in two months. I'm doing my absolute best to stay on top of my work schedule, but I am finding these "practical things that need taking care of" spilling into my day and eating up time that would otherwise be devoted to my clients' projects. I am in touch regularly with my clients whose projects are active right now, and if you have a project scheduled with me, it will start on time. If you're a client with a completed project who has contacted me with a question or a tweak, I will get to you--I promise! I am just a bit slow on non-essential emails right now, trying to prioritize stuff and get everything done. Trust me, I would much rather be helping my clients and designing pretty web pages, than sorting through banking stuff, looking over powers-of-attorney blah-blah-blah, etc.!

So, please bear with me the next month or so, as I try to get A LOT done in a very short amount of time. Like my husband always says, there's only one way to eat an elephant: one bite at a time!

Well, it's finally finished: The new Lilac Creative website! Back in April, I started to feel like my website was having a hard time keeping up with my business, both the design and the content management system. So, I started planning to rebuild my site on ExpressionEngine, and decided to give it a redesign at the same time. In planning my rebuilt and redesign, I used the same process I use when I build sites for clients: I examined the growing needs of my business and identified areas where my old site was not meeting those needs; I took into account both the kind of clients I currently serve as well as the kind of clients I want to attract; and lastly, I tried to identify ways that my website could help me streamline my business. The site you see before you is the result of months of planning, color-scheming, designing, late-night coding, and nit-picky copywriting. I plan to blog about the different aspects of my rebuild/redesign in future blog entries, to give anyone who's curious a little insight into how I work. Until then, have a look around the new site and let me know what you think! And if you catch any bugs, don't be shy about letting me know about them.

Due to recent unacceptable problems with my previous host, it became necessary for me to do an unscheduled and very sudden host switch.  I purchased new hosting, switched my name servers, uploaded all my files, and reinstalled my site on my new host in less than two hours–not bad!  But there are still a few areas of the site that still need to be re-setup: namely my blog (which is displaying all wonky for the moment), and my contact forms.  Bear with me while I get everything back to normal around here!

Also, if you happened to send me an email between 10pm and 12am EST, there’s a good chance I didn’t receive it.  My email is all setup again now, so if you had an email bounce back earlier, try sending it again and it should get to me.  Thanks!