If you’re a developer looking to get ahead in your field you then the only way is to never stop learning. Whether you’re working for a company, a freelance, or a hobbyist hacker, web developers must continually update their skills. The web technology changes in the blink of an eye and it’s one of the most beautiful things about it. These changes and improvements can be overwhelming if you don’t start to do something to catch up.

A top web developer is supposed to keep updated with any updates and developments that occur in web development as an industry. This in other words is to say that they should be highly flexible, adapting to any changes that occur. There has never been a successful web developer who feels he know enough and just stop learning at some point.

In this post, I will share some methods that ColorLabs developers use to enhance their WordPress skills and keep theirself updated with best practices and techniques in today’s coding. They involve everything from keeping up on what’s landing on browsers, following resources and references, to meeting other people with the same profession.

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ColorLabs & Company manage the business with 10 people and 7 collaborative designers who are scattered in various cities on the Java Island, Indonesia: Bandung, Jakarta and Surabaya. Some had only met face-to-face a handful of times. Some haven’t even met.

So on November 12, ColorLabs & Company enjoyed The ColorLabs Day 2011, our first company meetup, at the home base of our HQ, Bandung, Indonesia. It was a big event for us because for the first time ever, all team members are in one place! Since a number of the team now work virtually, it was an opportunity for the team to get together, and in some cases meet new members for the first time.

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Continuing with my series of blog interviews with the awesome people behind ColorLabs themes, I’d like to introduce you to Monika Halim.

Monika Halim is the foundational name behind our newest premium WordPress theme, Allegro. She is an interface designer with focus on usability and user experience. You can see some of her works on her portfolio. I got an excellent opportunity to interview her and know more about her journey in web designing. Let’s know more about her in the interview below and don’t forget to say hi to her on Twitter.

Enjoy!

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On Friday, July 29, Gabriel Hutagalung went to Surabaya to visit 2 ColorLabs teams who were there, Mohammad Zulkarnain (@zulsdesign) and Edy Supangat (@edypang). The day coincided with the convening of FreShSby Gathering in July.

FreShSby, which is the acronym of the Freedom of Sharing Surabaya, is a community of creative industries from Surabaya, East Java, Indonesia, with mission. Each month they held a FreShSby gathering as an offline discussion media between the creative industries in Surabaya. Mohammad Zulkarnain is one of the initiators of this community.

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ColorLabs is two years old now!

It’s been great two years and we want to thank everyone who has helped ColorLabs grow in any way. Whether you have downloaded one of our WordPress themes collection, or have become an affiliate of us, or contributed to our showcase page, or read our blog, or comment frequently, or are our loyal twitter follower, or a fan of us in Facebook… this is just a chance for us to say thank you. And to celebrate!

Here comes the birthday cake!

Birthday is happy time, and when it’s happy time we celebrate it with the whole gang, or almost.

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Do you guys still remember my interview with Firman Firdaus? So here we are, back again with another interview with another member of ColorLabs team. Without further ado, please let me introduce you to one of our newest web designers, Mohammad Zulkarnain. He is the owner of Zulsdesign Studio, Belajar Webdesign, and Indonesia Bercerita.

1. What did you study, and how did you become interested in design?

I took a major in Information Technology, concentrated on the logic of programming. After graduation, I worked as a web designer and focused on web designing and everything related to UX and UI. At that time I wanted to explore my designing skills.

I rarely use my programming skills because of that. However, it always feels nice to see a website with a nice look, elegance and ease of use.

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IDBYTE is the largest digital event in Indonesia. It is a week of engaging conferences, workshops and exhibitions. This year’s IDBYTE was held on July 11-14 at Ritz-Carlton, Pacific Place, Jakarta and also included the event of Bubu Awards V.07. Included in the IDBYTE series of events was a three-day workshop with several topics: mobile technology, social media, e-commerce and online measurement & analytics. IDBYTE 2011 (@idbyte) featured top global speakers in the digital industry, among others, such as Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, and eBay.

We sent our two best men, Rio and Anang, to attend the workshop on the second and third day. It was a rare and valuable opportunity for us to be able to obtain the latest information directly from the perpetrators of the world’s digital industry and there’s no way we’re going to miss the chance. Around 1000 people attended the three-day workshop. They consisted of various circles, but most were companies that deals with the digital world, so it’s a great opportunity for networking. Rio and Anang even had the chance to meet Shinta Dhanuwardoyo (@shintabubu), IDBYTE Chairwoman, in person.

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Finding the right people to work with is one of the elements that can make the difference between a mostly successful project and something really brilliant. We are proud to have such talented and motivated team at ColorLabs. In our mission to grow a tighter bond with you guys, ColorLabs themes users, we are going to show you how passionate everyone on the team is about the work they do.

This is the first of series of interviews to the ColorLabs team. Today I’m featuring Firman Firdaus, the man who designed SimpleReader, one of ColorLabs upcoming themes. Firman recently joined the ColorLabs team as a web designer. He provides visual designs (website mock-ups) for us to develop. He won the ColorLabs Design Contest in 2008 (with his winning theme: TypeMagz) and has been around in the world of blogging for so long.

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Finally, a new post after three months! It’s not that we were lazy. On the contrary, so many things have happened in three months. We realized that some changes need to be done in order for ColorLabs to provide better products and services. As a starter, we introduced the Resolution Center which was a huge revolution to ColorLabs technical support. Then we realized we had limited resources, that keeping our blog alive and engaging with the community were very difficult tasks.

But don’t turn your back on us! Things HAVE changed because now we have our own Community Manager!

Please let me introduce myself. My name is Anita Pravitasari and I am the new Community Manager. I’ll be in charge of maintaining ColorLabs blog and social media accounts (blog, Facebook, twitter, LinkedIn). I will make sure that everyone feels welcome in ColorLabs community and feels allowed to say anything, whether it is venting frustration or telling us that we are doing a great job. So, yes, I am the eyes and the ears. So hit me with everything you got (but please be gentle :)).

We also have another two new additions in the team.

Let’s give our warmest welcome to Firman Firdaus, our new Web Designer, and Rio Purnomo, our Web Developer. Firman provides visual designs (website mock-ups) for us to develop. He won the ColorLabs Design Contest in 2008 (with his winning theme: TypeMagz) and has been around in the world of blogging for so long. His specialty is minimalist design with a focus on typography. Rio will be taking care of HTML/CSS development.

With the help from both of them and the rest of the team we’ll be able to release new WordPress themes regularly. In fact we are working on some right now! Yay! (See? I told you we were busy.)

You can expect us to show off a lot here because we always give our best and we are very proud of our work and we can’t wait to tell the world about it.

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