As some of you may or may not have noticed, the theme I have been using across my network or projects is from WooThemes.  Now, while I might have told you a few years back that a premium WordPress theme was a waste of money and time (because you could always just do it yourself) I have had a change or heart.  My investment in purchasing a premium theme has been really fantastic.

The great thing about WooThemes is that they come with a very in-depth framework backend that allows you to tweak many of the ways the themes both look and feel to the users.  You can edit colors, styles, the layout and more.  I have been really impressed.  I have also been able to get rid of a few plugins because of the built in features that WooThemes delivers. 

For example, I no longer have to use the All-in-One SEO plugin for WordPress because my theme has SEO capabilities built into it. 

Now, I know for some of you the price might turn you off from wanting to go jump on the bandwaggon.  $70 is a lot of money.  However, when you consider you can use the theme for the rest of your life and on concurrent domains, the price is not all that bad.  You also gain access to all the updates for that theme for free too.

Go check out the selection of themes they provide, and see if you can find one or two that you like.  They have a few free themes too that you might want to play with to see how you like the way they manage the theme backend too.  Go give them a visit at woothemes.com.

You can check out the full portfolio of his work at SpecialistBarton.com.  Within the pages of this superb website, you will find both his professional portfolio and his personal artwork collection.  Both are well worth checking out for anybody who is a fan of unique, one of a kind art.

Here are just a few examples of the designs he has done:

With a bachelor’s degree of fine arts from the Art Institute of Dallas and mastery of Adobe Photoshop CS4, Adobe Illustrator CS4, Adobe InDesign CS4, Adobe Dreamweaver CS4, Adobe Flash CS4, Adobe Acrobat Professional, Quark XPress 7, Corel Painter, and many more I can tell you from personal experience – you will not find a more professional or skilled artist for your next big design project.

Want to get in contact with him? Go check out SpecialistBarton.com for more information. He gets two thumbs up from me!

I am always looking for great web development resources to share, but this time around I am going to give you a link that also highlights the best of the best when it comes to designer or developer tools.  Corkdump.com is one of the best resource web sites for webmasters.

They provide resources for:

• CSS/XHTML
• JavaScript/AJAX
• Flash/ActionScript
• Photoshop/Illustrator
• Blog Resources
• Design Insperation
• PHP/MySQL

That is not all, but I have to leave you with a few surprises, right?  So if you want a database of some of the best web developer links – check out and bookmark corkdump.com.  You will not be disappointed.

Lunarpages WordPress Contest Themes – Series One = 95+ WordPress Themes

Lunarpages WordPress Contest Themes – Series Two = 134+ WordPress Themes

Lunarpages WordPress Contest Themes – Series Three = 90+ WordPress Themes

Thanks to Lunarpages for providing a spotlight for all of these great WordPress themes!

I have done a number of custom icons in the past few weeks and months, so I figured – why not dump them all into a category so you can pick them up one by one?  Hence, the reason for the brand new (and reeking of awesomeness) custom icon category:

http://www.mitchelaneous.com/category/desktop/free-icons/

Browse through all the past icons, and if you have any requests – be sure to let me know!  More will be coming soon too, so look forward to seeing some updates there.

I have met a lot of people both inside and outside of the industry, but I have to say Kooshin is one of the coolest thus far. Always willing to hit me up with an instant message just to say hi, I am more than willing to hopefully point a few of you in his direction.

If you want to check out some of his work – you can do so via his Web site KooshinDesigns.com. Just this afternoon he was showing me one layout that had a lot of promise here, and I know he has a few more good designs just itching for some inspiration.

The only stipulation that he told me about was that he would like for you to keep a link back up on your Web site to him for the design credit. I will leave you and him to work out the rest of the small details.

So shoot him over an E-mail at sales@kooshindesigns.com if your interested and if you take him up on the offer let me know how it works out!

+ Download My Free MySpace Layout! (.zip)
+ Download My First Free MySpace Layout! (.zip)
+ See It In Action On My MySpace Profile!