EVRD.net was started to expand on the ideas and success of Everything Random. We managed to do just that. EVRD grew into its own success. At its peak, EVRD was generating traffic of half a million visitors per month. It grew fast and strong.
What made EVRD a success was the platform and our ability to add features and content quickly. Built on WordPress, and very customized features, EVRD was able to do many things that we were unable to do with Everything Random (a tumblr built website).
The success was a double edged sword. What was a fun website and side project, turned into the most time consuming and resource intensive project we had. It became more about cleaning code, server maintenance, and database fixing, rather than updating and creating content.
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We have been fans of Red Bubble since firs discovering it, and an affiliate partner for the past fews month. Our interactions are mostly finding great designs and products to post on the Everything Random network. Today, we are become a more active member of the Red Bubble community, making some of our own designs available as well.
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Our birthday is coming up (March 16th), and to help mark the occasion we are launching a complete redesign of our company website. You may have noticed this blog has already gone through a few early changes.
The new deign needed fit our philosophy, simple is better. That doesn’t mean just taking everything out. The site still needed to function and be the face for Rivik Media. Here’s a look at our thought process.
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Congrats to lucky submission number 167 belonging to Jen (@jlhenn) for being the winner of the very first EVRD giveaway and the now proud owner of a Flip HD Camera. You can view her winning submission here. Thanks to everyone that participated. We couldn’t have asked for a better launch day. Check back to the site over the next few days to see your submissions on the front page. And keep submitting. We love the stuff you guys generate. I’d be lying if I said we didn’t enjoy seeing everything you come up with.
The EVRD network was created as an extension/addition to Everything Random, a project started by Rivik Media. Everything Random has been running for almost two years now, and it has been a hell of a ride. From being started as an experiment and somewhat of a joke to it seeing over 60,000 people in a single day. We have been trying to expand and grow the site but have hit a physical limitation. Everything Random is hosted by tumblr (one of the best blogging platforms out there) but the site and our ideas have outgrown the hosted platform. We wanted to have more control and freedom to build new features for our visitors. Thus creating EVRD.
EVRD is a self hosted wordpress site that will become the new ‘main site’. Wordpress allows for a large, feature rich, and organized site. We will be creating new and (hopefully) better features on EVRD and allow for more user interaction. You can check here or on the official EVRD blog for updates.
Everything Random will remain on tumblr and stay unchanged. It will still be updated regularly and function the same as it always have.
*note: this is not meant to be a bash on tumblr in any way, so don’t take it that way.
The first installment of this 2 part series on what plugins every WordPress installations should have, is going to focus on the first plugins you should install. These should be set up before you start posting, it will make managing your website easier and more efficient.
1. Fluency Admin: This plugin will customize the admin user interface of wordpress. It makes everything much more organized, and adds some nice keyboard navigation options. Fluency also allows you to easily customize the login/logout screen with a logo of your choice, replacing the wordpress default logo.
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To Internet Summit 09. Rivik Media will be in attendance this week, November 4th and 5th, at the 2009 Internet Summit in Raleigh, NC. The Internet Summit is one of the largest internet tech conferences in the US. Speakers from ESPN.com, Technorati, Pandora, and Google (to name a few) will all be presenting the growing trends in online technology.
Personally, I’m looking forward to the panel discussion about cloud computing. Rivik Media has long advocated the use of cloud computing in the small business structure. Hopefully we can learn more to make this solution even more useful to our clients. There will also be interesting discussions on social media and online advertising. All in all this should be an informative and worth while trip for the Rivik Media team.
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