I've been writing this blog since 2008. Previously I was using BlogEngine.net to power my blog but lately I've been on the lookout for something a bit different.

I love Wordpress and the ease of use that brings, especially when upgrading or installing modules. At the time of writing there is no 'one click' install option for BlogEngine and updating my blog was becoming a chore with each release.

I've been very busy over the last few weeks working on some interesting MVC 3 projects but one of the things I was meaning to get around to was redoing my own RichardReddy.ie website. I had let the domain just sit there for about 12months but thankfully I had some time over the weekend to get a simple 'CV' style site up and running.

I will be launching another 2 personal sites very soon to highlight my mobile work. I've been having a great time developing for Windows Phone and I'm hoping to make some more apps for the phone very soon so having a website/portal showcasing my work makes sense. All going well these should be live before the end of March.

I've been really busy over the last few months planning some really cool new projects that I'd like to launch during the year. As a side effect my own blog hasn't been updated as much as I'd have liked. Fear not though as I have some new posts that I'm currently working on that should be online shortly (fingers crossed!).

One new side project I have just launched is Stuff4Designers.com, a website dedicated to bringing you the best web resources and inspiration for web designers from around the interwebs. Rebecca FitzGerald-Smith is co-owner with me on this site.

Go check it out and if you have any design ideas or showcases be sure to let us know!

Just a quick note to let you know that my CoolBlue theme is now BlogEngine 2.0 compatible. Head on over to the original post to download this file. This theme plays nice with Disqus if you want to use that commenting system and will work with the new login page links out of the box.

I have also included a BlogEngine 1.6 version of the theme if anyone wants to continue using the older version of BlogEngine.

I should have a new theme available for BlogEngine 2.0 in a few weeks. If you come across a nice looking free HTML template that you would like me to convert to BlogEngine please let me know in the comments below.

I just updated my own blog to run the new BlogEngine and it was pretty painless to setup. The only snag is that I'm using Disqus as my commenting system so I've lost all my older comments because I'm using this new system. It's a small price to pay as personally I think Disqus is a better comment system.

I've been extremely busy the past few months working on a new version of Hertz4Ryanair.com that will be rolling out to all European countries very soon. This new version of the website includes many new additions including:

• New Hertz Advantage branded area
• Dual Hertz/Advantage pricing screen
• Updated languages for Spanish, Portuguese, French, Italian, Dutch and Swedish
• Improved admin area with charting controls, export to excel options, full control over when to display dual pricing, etc.

I'm also very excited about this project because it is the first project that I've worked on which sits on multiple servers for both the web servers and database servers. The raw power of the server setup is huge and I am very curious to see how it handles all of the traffic from launching in 26 countries.

The work never stops though and once this project is finished and live there are some new exciting changes coming to our online store software that will be launching in the early part of next year for customers so stay tuned!