Over the past 12 days, if you've ventured over to Liquidicity you may been a little disappointed to see a blank page telling you that we've been "having a break". We apologise for this. However, that apology isn't satisfactory unless you know why it happened and what we're doing to make sure it doesn't happen again. So here goes...

What's up? What's down?

We were a little startled when we woke up to find our stats showing just 300 visitors for whole day, in fact I am sure you know the feeling if you've ever owned a site yourself. We immediately looked into the reasons for our low level of traffic, and it didn't take us long to realise we were down. Our first intention was to work out why were down, and then to try and get back online before too many people noticed.

Unfortunately, we didn't go down due to our server being overloaded with excessive numbers of Digg users, or Stumblers, or even Twitter followers. Not that it's acceptable to go offline when you get a sudden popularity increase, but it's better than going offline for seemingly no reason whatsoever. Obviously, there was a reason for going offline, but it wasn't a reason that could be found by looking at the Digg homepage. In fact, the reason for our down time continued to puzzle us for days.

We established that the problem was nothing to do with the levels of traffic we were receiving, so we tried disabling the entire site and then re-enabling certain parts of GoSquared in turn to see what was causing our server's resources to be completely consumed. We eventually managed to isolate the problem to Liquidicity. We anxiously enabled Liquidicity again and kept a close eye on all server and traffic activity on Liquidicity. We were expecting to see a large number of visitors reaching a certain page or file that forced the server to process excessive amounts of information, or at least a steady build up of resource usage that culminated in the server giving up at full capacity. But we saw none of these common signs. Instead, after a few hours, Liquidicity appeared to simply stop, and any traffic reaching the site after that point was simply met by wonderfully unattractive "Server not Responding" error.

Priorities

Our main priority was to ensure the main GoSquared site, that hosts the GoSquared Ad Network was online. When our Ad Network suffers downtime, currently it can cause Sites that show Squares to also suffer slow response times, and in the worst of cases can cause Sites on the Network to go offline. Obviously, this is the last thing we could possibly want - the Sites on our Network mean everything to us, and we owe them the best service we can possibly provide.

As we have mentioned before, we are working on the next major version of GoSquared - it's taking much longer than expected, but we are rethinking everything from the core. The next version of GoSquared will not only be a lot faster for all Sites on the Network, but we are doing everything to ensure that problems with the GoSquared site do not affect the entire GoSquared Ad Network.

Why so Ugly?

As you can see, Liquidicity is back up (which we're pleased to say) but it's looking the worst it ever has (which we're not so pleased to say).

Why have we got the default theme on here? We've further isolated the problem to a file contained in the theme we created for Liquidicity a few weeks ago. We're still trying to work out exactly what it is in that file that is causing such a hiccup to occur, and until then, we're afraid you're going to have to put up with this "classic" WordPress design.

Essentially, we would prefer to get our resources and articles back online and available for consumption rather than show absolutely nothing.

We hope you understand while we fix the problem. The Liquidicity you know will be back soon.

Update

We've managed to get the Liquidicity theme back, so things are almost entirely back to normal. We're not showing feed subscribers and we have a few other plug-ins disabled currently, but other than that it should be service as usual. Thanks again for your patience.

Apologies, and thanks for your patience,

The GoSquared Team

Ever wanted to type the copyright icon, or do an accent over an A without having to resort to some character palette? We have, and it takes time and is an effort. So we put together a series of help sheets that reference all of the characters that aren't listed on your keyboard, along with their shortcut keys to make your life easier.

New to GoSquared?

For those of you new to GoSquared - we design and engineer web applications for site owners to monitor their traffic and earn more money from their Site. We run Liquidicity, the blog on design & technology to share our thoughts and content with wonderful people like you in the hope that one day you'll use our products.

Click on a preview image to view a full jpg.

Note: The "Alt" key on these sheets is the same as the "Option" key as some users may put it. Why people were getting so upset about this I just don't know.

Download the full set

Get them all in one PDF (216KB)

The Individual Sheets

There were so many, that to make the reference usable and readable we had to divide them into 3 sheets.

Get the PDF (128KB)

Get the PDF (116KB)

Last but not least, one more sheet.

Get the PDF (112KB)

We hope you find them useful.

You might also like our free vector and pixel-perfect icons.

Listen up Mac users. You may already know this, but I didn't until the other day, and it really comes in handy. Safari has a little tool called the Activity Window, which can be accessed by going to going to "Window > Activity" (shortcut: alt + apple + a). In here you can see every file that the website you are viewing is calling upon. The brilliant thing is that by double clicking any one of these files, it will download straight to your desktop.

Considering you would most likely want to download a file containing video or audio, look in the column on the right to see its size. By process of elimination you will see that the biggest file will be the one you want.

So if you happened to be on YouTube, you could download any video you wanted. Similarly, if you were on MySpace, and had no respect for copyright law, you could download anything you wanted.

This, if you didn't know it already, could save a lot of people a lot of time (and money).

You might also like 165 Vector Icons, 50 Ways to Become a Better Designer, 77 Vector Buttons

Read the rest of this entry »

Everyone seemed to like our original set of vector icons, so we thought you might like some more. 165 more to be precise. In 5 colours. So, I suppose that actually makes 825 icons. As always, they're free for you to use as you wish. Oh, and this time, as you asked nicely, we are giving away an svg as well. Hope you like 'em!

For those of you new to GoSquared - we design and engineer web applications for site owners to monitor their traffic and earn more money from their Site. We run Liquidicity, the blog on design & technology to share our thoughts and content with wonderful people like you in the hope that one day you'll use our products.

Here's the blue set, download the jpg, svg, and ai as a zip.

Get the Adobe Illustrator CS2 File (1.9MB)

Get the jpeg here. (396KB)

Here's the green set, download the jpg, svg, and ai as a zip.

Get the Adobe Illustrator CS2 File (2.4MB)

Get the jpeg here. (424KB)

Here's the red set, download the jpg, svg, and ai as a zip.

Get the Adobe Illustrator CS2 File (1.9MB)

Get the jpeg here. (468KB)

Here's the white set, download the jpg, svg, and ai as a zip.

Get the Adobe Illustrator CS2 File (1.9MB)

Get the jpeg here. (268KB)

And finally, here's the black set, download the jpg, svg, and ai as a zip.

Get the Adobe Illustrator CS2 File (1.9MB)

Get the jpeg here. (256KB)

You might also like 77 Vector Buttons, 50 Ways to Become a Better Designer.

Being a successful creative has a lot to do with the way you work. Sure, you can't teach good design, but it never hurts to learn a few new tricks, or simply make the most of your talents. So without further adieu, here's 50 ways to be more successful as a designer. Take 'em or leave 'em.

Don't get stuck before you've started: get some good ideas.

1] Metaphors.

Great ideas can stem from using themes and metaphors. Basing a site design around the idea of a school, for example, can open up a whole avenue of ideas. A great design works because the theme houses and conveys the content seamlessly.

2] Don't take all day to brainstorm.

It always helps to throw ideas around with a colleague or friend (as long as he knows what he's doing). Try to have a couple of short sessions of brainstorming rather than one massive one as ideas can quickly go cold.

3] Get off that computer!

Sometimes it's best to just have a break. Leaving the computer can seem like going on holiday in rush hour, but it usually helps if you just take a 10 minute break and get some fresh air. If you can't do that, try listening to some music, or taking your jumper off.

4] Join a forum.

A lot of creatives work from home, but that doesn't mean they can't talk to anyone. There are a lot of really helpful and talented people out there willing to have a chat about design, you just need to find them. Here are some of my favorite forums:

Graphic Design Forum (one of the oldest and largest forums on graphic design)
Smashing Magazine Forums
Layers Magazine
Designate Online
DevLounge (OK, it's not a forum, but it's a really decent site)

5] Think brand.

Try going to a few courses on branding, as brand thinking is vital to developing the way you think. Keep your ideas squeaky simple, and 9 times out 0f 10 they will work. Thinking in terms of branding means you can develop key words to stem your ideas from. Complexity just doesn't work.

6] Use a sketchbook.

I almost always start with ideas that I have scribbled down in my trusty sketchbook. Whenever I get an idea I just make sure I get it down on paper. This always helps as whenever you're stuck at a later date, you don't have to go out and buy another book, just refer to your own! Don't just keep it to ideas though, put URLs, book titles, words, and all the sketches down that you can. It will develop into your creative mind, on paper.

7] Get your specs straight.

Always ensure you know the media you're going to be using at the start of working on a project. Knowing that there's going to be photography involved means you may need to think about locating a shoot. 3D may mean getting some help to make it look that little bit better. Taking it to print in the last minute is also not advised: things never go to plan! Ensure you know the scale of production you're going to be dealing with, and research the printing processes you're going to use.

8] Draw a map.

I find it helps to visualise the brief. Highlight key words and phrases, and jot them down in your trusty sketchbook. Then see how these ideas could link up by drawing lines between them and branching out from those core ideas. Pretty soon you'll have enough on the page to sketch out some decent ideas.

9] Rough it out.

Once you have THE idea, and it's on paper, try putting it together at low res on the computer. This way you can see what you might need to rethink or improve to get the job done well. At this stage you don't need to worry about perfect dimensions or colours, just see how it goes.

10] Take a shower.

No, not because your odor is putting your colleagues off, but because (apparently) running water increases brain productivity. Try not bring the brief in with you, but spending time in a place that you feel really comfortable in can greatly help those ideas flow. Read the rest of this entry »

Can't be bothered with making buttons? Want some new ones to add to your collection? Need a little inspiration? We've put together a little set of 77 buttons that we hope will lend you a hand in your times of button making breakdown. There all here to download in Adobe Illustrator format, just like our icon set. Alternatively, if you're not a fan of Illustrator, you can get a JPEG or an SVG, just follow the link. We hope you like them!

Get the Adobe Illustrator CS2 File (1.9MB)

Don't have Illustrator?

Get the jpeg here. (264KB)

Here's the SVG version (425KB).

You might also like our Icons...

Here you go, the icon set by GoSquared. 165 hand drawn icons that you can use for whatever you like. Most probably your website. We have worked pretty hard to get these done, so we hope you like them.

For those of you new to GoSquared - we design and engineer web applications for site owners to monitor their traffic and earn more money from their Site. We run Liquidicity, the blog on design & technology to share our thoughts and content with wonderful people like you in the hope that one day you'll use our products.

Get the Adobe Illustrator CS2 File (1.9MB)

Don't have Illustrator?
Get the SVG here. (471KB)
Get the jpeg here. (256KB)

Oh, and here's a little preview:

Now available in 5 Colours!