Well it's been over a year since one, what happened? Well I kind-of got addicted to World of Warcraft and disappeared. But fear not! VS is not dead, and I intend on giving it a kick up the bottom soon.

Apologizes for the lack of widget and theme updates.

Hope you enjoy the release, and please refer to my Agora "Niqu Briefly" post for more information.

Two Million, And Counting! - The small victory is in fact quite a large number, during the month of May, which has not seen its halfway mark, VanillaSoap has reached over 2,000,000 collective hits. Marking the second time around a one million milestone has found its way around the bend, in only the past eleven months, the staff of VSD would like to personally thank all of you out there who have helped grow and progress VanillaSoap Design to what it is becoming today.

Widgets Dropped In - Our collection of widgets has had an awesome response, and have been featured on Apple, MacWorld as well as numerous other sites. We're going to be working hard to improve upon this success with new features and entirely new widgets - development will certainly be fun! Reflecting our success in the hits category (forgive us for touting ourselves), VanillaSoap's widgets, through this site and the mentioned partners and mirrors, have attained over 90,000 distributions.

Auditor Insight - Our about section is now available for prying eyes, as well as potential clients. It has all the information on our staff including their location, age, mediums and their computers. If you're thinking of hiring anyone, just feel free to contact them via any listed ways.

Sinfully Professional - Lastly, a progress report on Niqu. VanillaSoap Design's first (complete) theme. Niqu was previewed quite some time ago, back in December, and unfortunately it's taken this long to complete. In truth, without the Tiger upgrade Niqu would of been available for download now but alas we couldn't release an outdated theme on release.

Niqu should be arriving this month.

What Changed?
The first few months of VanillaSoap were met with polite enthusiasm by friends and members of Aqua-Soft.org - where I used to spend a lot of my time and release most of my work. Eventually it become clear that a single one-page site would not meet the needs or the creative flare that I like to capture in my projects.

And so, around this time, fate would have me meet Chris O'Brien.

From Then On..
VanillaSoap has never been quite the same, with a competent and talented programmer it meant VanillaSoap could be refined and crafted beautifully. There have been numerous revisions and changes in that time, including the birth and death of some projects and separate mini-sites, and integrated web-logs. The newest incarnation of VanillaSoap -- henceforth named VanillaSoap Design, or “VSD” -- not only revamps the look, but fixes some of the functionality whilst adding new interesting parts.

So What's New?
• Hirable
Possibly the biggest change is how we are now hirable and proud of it. You can check out our portfolio on past work, as well as taking a glance at our new About page that contains information and contacts for our staff.

• Widgets
With the release of the world's most advanced OS - Mac OS X 10.4 "Tiger" - VanillaSoap Design has embraced one of the sparkly new features, named Dashboard. Dubbed as being 'exposé for widgets' Dashboard lets you quickly show and hide useful and interesting mini-applications named Widgets. VSD is one of the handful of people that began to develop widgets as soon as possible, after the WWDC2004. As of today we're proud to offer our widgets for download, so be sure to check out some of our amazing widgets.

• The side-bar.
VanillaSoap 2.1's width was something many people seemed to find controversial -- unable to understand why it was so thin compared to other sites. Of course I had my own reasons as to why I liked that, but ultimately a thicker layout is more appropriate for newer resolutions. Especially when some people I know complain about it on their wide-screen displays. So now VSD contains a helpful sidebar that holds information on the newest Agora posts, as well as offering the ability to search, and other things.

• Agora
We are all lazy at times, and sometimes I do an icon and cannot be bothered doing all the jazz for a 'proper' release. Of course, sometimes I, or others, just like to rant about something. And maybe, just maybe, we like to spam. Agora is a haven for all these things -- it's our proverbial playground for releasing small things and having fun.

• Other Cool Things
» A New Look. The all-new feel, dubbed "Type3" is a heavy refinement on the previous look of 2.1 -- with mixtures of greys, graphite blues and greens. It's a subtle mix that feels more relaxed tonally to the eyes.
» DeskCase is our new bi-weekly mini-competition; just email in a desktop screenshot and every second monday we'll have a winner, who's desktop shot will be shown on VSD. Of course they may get special treats for winning too...
» SurfClips is to websites as Agora is to miscellaneous spam. Best kept up with by using it's dedicated RSS feed, SurfClips notes amusing, fun or great websites that are worth a few minutes of your time.

At the moment I've "closed" the GUI, Portfolio and About off, because I haven't repackaged, written or nagged (respectively). They'll be available by the end of the week.