Most foreign folks living in China, or with any interest in China, are bound to know Danwei.org, possibly the most widely-read English-language blog about China, and many of you have also likely watched Danwei-produced and -affiliated videos (Sexy Beijing, The Shanghai Beat, etc.).

Previously, all video content was constrained to the main Danwei.org site and its written-word layout, and though a Danwei.TV site had been set up, it operated in much the same way. But no longer!

It was the goal of Jeremy Goldkorn and the Danwei crew to rework things into a more logical and purpose-made (for both visitors and publishers) structure.

You’ll notice immediately that the overall design was not changed, but rather just brought in line with the existing Danwei.org look and feel. The real work for me came in melding the CMS (WordPress) to the site’s video-intensive needs and adhering to the stipulation that it must be easy to use.

It is easily the most advanced WordPress templating I’ve had to do, with a lot of custom PHP operating behind the scenes to make it all function properly – but it was a blast to work on and I think it turned out quite well. It didn’t hurt that Jeremy was as personable and approachable in real-life as he is in his videos – always great to work with people you genuinly enjoy working with.

Incidentally, if you’re interested in other stuff I’ve been working on, check out the portfolio on Dao By Design.

Republished – this time with comments on. Seriously, don’t know what the heck is happening with my comments auto turning themselves off lately.

As long-time readers might be aware, my full-time gig isn’t witty Chinese commentary (some would argue it’s not even my part-time gig). To keep the lights on, I run a small design/web development firm that specializes in simple to operate CMS-based sites for SMEs.

When I kicked the biz off back last summer I whipped together a site that delivered the basic message, but that I had planned to upgrade to something more future-expandable as soon as I had some free time.

A couple weeks back it hit me – I’m never going to have free time again.

I absolutely love my work. It appeases much of my voluminous creative appetite while also giving my brain little algorithmic logic puzzles it desires. It allows me to build something with my bare hands (fingers really) that I can be proud of and also gives me the opportunity to be involved with some amazing people and their projects.

However, what it gives in all that it takes in time and energy. As anyone that runs their own business will tell you – it never sleeps. And when your clients are in every timezone the world offers, you tend to lose all sense of what a day, week, month, year is.

What this has made me realize is that the only time I have is the time I give myself. There’s no boss above me telling me I can take 15 minutes or that it’s time to go home. No labour board I can complain to about my employer (he’s a real hard-ass). Only clients whom assume you’re like a cell phone in a Chinese cinema – on all the time.

And so, had I waited for that free time to arrive, I never would have found time to upgrade my business site. As it was I squeezed it in between waiting for various deliverables to arrive and new episodes of Entourage to download. Please check it out and let me know what you think. All negative feedback will be met swiftly with a “yeah… so… what’d you build last week?”

As might be expected, I’ve also upgraded the Dao By Design blog to match the look of the new site. The blog’s focus will largely remain the same, but I may start including more details about the various Web projects I’m building for myself (Lost Laowai, Hao Hao Report, Tip. Trick. Mod., and a number of others still to come), and projects I’m working on for others (with client approval, of course).