andreasviklund.com

First of all, music! Only four days after posting a link to the old Leeloo Project music page on the classic free music site Beatmaka.com, the three Leeloo Project remixes are ranked #1, #2 and #3 on the Beatmaka music chart.

While it is not very hard to achieve (Beatmaka appears to be very silent nowadays), it brings back warm memories of the Lagoona era and the way producers tried to outshine eachother with new and fresh songs. There are still some amazing tracks to find on the site, so it is a bit sad to see the low activity.

Second, WordPress themes! Since the opening of the new WordPress theme directory and the release of three of my themes there, I have browsed through lots of great themes. And I've followed the "most popular" list with big interest to learn more about what makes a theme more interesting.

Yesterday I noticed that WP-Andreas01 was one of the featured themes on the frontpage, and that it is currently the most popular theme out of the 145 that have been made available on the theme directory so far. It was a nice surprise that gave an extra boost of inspiration. I know that it will be pushed away from that spot very soon, but I can't help being a bit proud about it. After all, the andreas01 template which the theme design is based on, was the first website template that I ever released. It is just amazing to see that it still finds its way out to new users more than three years after its original release…

No time for celebrations though! Johanna and I are very close to an official launch of our web development company, but we still don't have any own company website online so that is one of the priorities for now. The company is named Ileva after my ILEVA idea, and I am happy to announce that there will finally be official Ileva templates out there. Not as an open source design concept, but with the same idea behind the code. And of course still free. I will write more about it in future posts, for sure.

I have mentioned the Leeloo Project before, and referred to it as my new band. Things are slowly starting to happen, and the official website will be launched soon. I will probably write a lot more about the band and the adventure that it will be (not to forget, the amazing skills of Perzzon, the other half of the duo) but I'll save that for now and just post an interesting link to classic music site Beatmaka.com where you can listen to three full remixes for free:

Listen to The Leeloo Project (click the "play" buttons)

With the opening of the new official WordPress theme directory on WordPress.org, you will see a number of changes on my WordPress themes page. I will have as many of my themes hosted on the theme site as possible, and I am now uploading the themes as they are updated. Two themes have been approved so far, WP-Andreas01 (updated to v2.0) and the new Daleri Sweet. 1024px is awaiting its review and approval and will probably be added in a few days.

You can see live previews of the themes, grade them and find many other good themes on the site, and it is well worth a visit even though the number of themes is low so far. All themes are reviewed in detail before approval to ensure that they meet the requirements for being hosted on WordPress.org. All my approved themes are listed on my userpage, and you can also subscribe to the andreas tag to stay updated on new releases and updates.

In my slowly ongoing project to organize my old music and sort out the best pieces, time has now come to do something about all the many intros and semi-finished songs that I have made over the years. Out of about 150 unfinished songs and a few released ones, I have gathered 12 tracks in different genres that have one thing in common: They are all suitable as mobile phone ringtones. Short, melodic and instrumental, these old clips (made between 1997 and 2002) are not that good - but if you want a somewhat different and pretty unique MP3 ringtone in your phone then you may want to listen to these songs.

The files are released in the form of an MP3 album which is simply called "Ringtones". Like all of my music, these songs are free to download and free to use. And free to share with your friends if you would want to. All I ask for is that you leave the ID3 tags intact. Here are the direct download links:

Updated: The links have been moved. The ringtones were downloaded in thousands of copies and my server couldn't handle it very well. I did not expect that kind of interest so I'll need to organize it in some other way soon.

…or rather one out of many possible ways to do it:

This screencast by WebBriefcase shows how to edit a copy of andreas07 using a visual editor, without having to write any code at all. It shows only the basics, but it may still be interesting to see since it shows one of the best things about using templates: You can get a complete website done very quickly, and the result can be really good.

WebBriefcase has a lot of other interesting articles and tutorials for site owners, bloggers and template users - it is well worth a visit.