From the way they source their materials to their approach to retailing, Nau ‘s ambitious approach as an apparel company is revolutionary. (They get bonus points for recognizing the value of unique and well-executed graphic and interactive design too.)

Then came the bad news.

The first part of May, I heard Nau was going out of business. Naturally, I took advantage of 50% off prices across the board. I couldn’t be happier with the items I ordered, but when they arrived I was even more bummed that they were closing up shop. Great quality and style from a company that values unique design and ethical business practices isn’t easy to find.

When you least expect it…great news.

I was excited and happy to read on their blog that Horny Toad has hooked up with the crew at Nau and kicked in some capital to make it possible for Nau to reimagine some aspects of the business and keep things going.

Welcome back and congratulations! Now get back to work. I need some new pants.

I’m taking some of my own advice–to stop ignoring my websites and start making more frequent content additions. You’re looking at step one. The other is my business site that lives over here.

It’s been a long, long time since I’ve done much to update to this site. Up until now, its only purpose was to be a place to park my portfolio and CV. I hadn’t given a thought to rebuilding it around a blog until I started working out the architecture and content for the new DROPKICK site. A weblog is one of the central features there, but I’d like to target the topics there to current and potential clients.

Since I needed to bring my portfolio site up to date anyway, I realized it would be a good place to park those topics that wouldn’t necessarily be of interest to my current or potential clients but relate to graphic design, web development, software, etc.

I went back and forth between Expression Engine and WordPress a few times before I made a decision on the platform I was going to build from. They both have advantages, but ultimately it came down to WordPress. Not because I feel it’s necessarily better than EE, but because I wanted to see how well it’d serve as a complete CMS for the site with a bare minimum of hacking. My spec for the site required the following: a portfolio section, a separate–but linked–blog, and a home page that pulls in data from both portfolio and blog posts dynamically.

It’s turned out to be a relatively quick and painless process. I still have some bits to fiddle with and features to implement as the amount of content increases, but I’m calling it 95% complete.

I haven’t done anything super complicated, but if there’s any interest I’d be happy to write a short tutorial series on exactly what I’ve done behind the scenes. Send me an email or post in the comments if you’re interested.