Looking back at 2008
It’s been quite the year for me in 2008, and I thought a nice blog post summing up all my “achievements” for the year would be in order. This year has seen me transition from a part time, unknown web designer to a full time freelancer and co-founder of an online “startup”.
Here are some of my personal achievements for 2008 (and late 2007 to tie the knots):
November 2007
Made a couple of free WordPress themes after checking out WordPress for the first time. Thought it would be a good exercise since I wasn’t exactly pulling web design work. Saw that the free themes became very popular and were downloaded a lot. Decided to try and make a “premium” theme (or commercial/paid), after seeing that there was a market for this.
Sent an e-mail to Adii, who had a very popular commercial theme called “Premium News Theme”, about a possible collaboration on a theme. This would turn out to be quite a important e-mail that would change my path in life. NewsPress was released as the second theme in the PNT series.
January
Started my second collab with Adii, and came up with a smoother looking concept called Flash News, which was released soon thereafter on PNT website.
April
Learning from my first two collaborations with Adii, I stepped up my game and created what turned out to be our most popular WordPress theme by far, maybe even THE single most popular theme ever: FRESH NEWS
May
After working as a programmer at EM Software for just over 7 years, and after much thinking and soul searching, I finally took the plunge and handed in my letter of resignation. This was a step I was able to make because of my increased involvement with Adii and increased work flow from custom design projects.
July
After months of planning, coding and designing, we rebranded Premium News Theme to WooThemes. Me, Adii and Mark Forrester became equal partners, when the initial 4th partner, start designer Elliot Jay Stocks, decided to focus on his own work.
August
15th of August was my last day at work, and the first day of my freelancing career.
September
Released my first theme to the WooThemes gallery called Fresh Folio. This was meant as a personal portfolio redesign, but decided it would make a good addition to our only other portfolio theme on Woo.
October
Quickly followed up with another very popular theme on WooThemes, my first business theme called Over Easy.
November
Finally redesigned my old portfolio by using Over Easy as the foundation.
December
Released my 6th theme named Busy Bee (code named Fresh-News-Killer) on WooThemes, and after posting a few previews on my blog and Flickr, it smashed our previous first day record for amount of downloads, and is already heading towards becoming one of our most popular themes.
So that is me blowing my own trumpet on the important happenings in 2008. I’d like to thank Adii and Mark Forrester for getting me where I am today (gotta love freelancing), everyone who has backed me on my decisions (girlfriend, family and friends), and last but not least, all of those who follow and appreciate my work; Your emails and comments have really been heart warming to say the least.
I wish everybody a merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!
Dec 22, 2008
Really is quite mind blowing when you take a look back at what we’ve achieved in the last year.
Great to have met you and got to know you so well through WooThemes this year. Look forward to an exciting 2009, but before then have a great Christmas chill out!
Dec 22, 2008
What you, Adii and Mark have achieved with Woothemes over the last 12 months is amazing. I can’t wait to see what you all do next
Have a great Christmas and a happy New year.
Dec 23, 2008
MXmasHPNY!
Dec 23, 2008
Yeah bud – it’s insane to think that one e-mail and one collaboration started our whole friendship and business relationship…
Been an awesome year for sure and I can’t wait for 2009, now that you, Mark & I are all freelancing and thus control however how time we invest back in WooThemes to grow it even further.
Dec 26, 2008
good job in 2008,.. great job must continues,…
Dec 30, 2008
Great job on both the Over Easy and the Busy Bee themes. I will be looking forward to downloading any more business themes that you will be designing and making available on WooThemes. Keep it up!
Dec 31, 2008
Quite a list of accomplishments, good on you.
I just started my blog, but hope to be able to have such a list when I look back at 2009 as well
Jan 4, 2009
Nice work! You make norwegians proud, haha!
Jan 8, 2009
Your story is inspiring, thanks for sharing and here’s to an even better 2009! Cheers!