Hello boys and girls!  Just a little post to put down some rumors and stories regarding some of the web properties I founded or owned that have been acquired by new companies or individuals.  With Manwin taking up my online passions, I don’t really have the time to run much of a web presence outside of work hours, so I’ve been looking for qualified people to take over my various sites and keep them moving in to the future.  A couple of months ago, http://www.pixel2life.com was acquired by a local Montreal based company that promises big things on the site and the migration is now over and I play no roles on there anymore.

With pixel2life.com gone, it was still obvious I had no time for my hobby based sites, so those had to go as well… I started with www.thehunterslair.com, which is now managed and owned by Art Andrews and his company.  They also run The Replica Prop Forum (RPF) and Dented Helmet so I know he will do a kick ass job with the Lair.  They took over a couple of weeks ago but I am stillactive on the site and will be deploying the latest IPB updates before I start fading in to the background.

The final project is my beloved www.predatorstuff.com, which is going to a very enthusiastic fellow Predator collector named Richard.  The migration has already begun to his server and I’ll be working with him on operating the site over the coming weeks.  He’s VERY stoked about running Predatorstuff and again, I know he’ll do a great job with fresh energy and has the time the site deserves dedicated to it.

So this leaves me with the two sites I will be keeping… my personal blog site www.danrichard.com and the new hosting company I started at the beginning of the year www.p2lhosting.com and I have zero intentions or parting with it.  In fact with the other sites leaving my business portfolio, I will have more time to work on the hosting, which I plan on working on with Adam and rebranding it so it’s not attached to the P2L brand.  So if you’re thinking about hosting, we’re not going anywhere!  You can check out the site and sign up for hosting by clicking HERE!

It should also note that included with the sites I’ve sold were all the twitter and facebook accounts that were associated to them.  So if you want to follow me, you can find my personal twitter account here: @THEdanrichard

That’s it guys.. looking forward to being off NDA next month, then I can share which site I am managing now!

Dan

I think it’s pretty safe to say that the sale of Pixel2life.com passed through the internet pipes very quietly, and without causing much of a ripple in the community, largely thanks to the fact that I didn’t exactly advertise it. In fact for many of you, this posting will be the first time you hear about it… don’t feel bad, it’s the first time I post about it so don’t try ripping through the P2L forums wondering if you somehow missed the boat.

It’s official, I am no longer the owner of Pixel2life.com or any of the network sites except for the hosting, which will stay on team Dan even if I do have to rename the company at some point. P2L was posted briefly on Flippa.com and generated a lot of interest, but within a few days I actually found a local company here in Montreal that wanted to purchase the site as it was in line with their product development plans and were VERY excited when they find out about P2L. The official sale was signed a couple of weeks ago and slowly I have been transitioning the site to their very capable team and training them on day to day operations as well as plans I had for the site etc. I expect to complete the transition fully over the next couple of weeks, and from there you will see very little of me on P2L and a LOT more of them… in fact I am very excited about their ownership as they have the resources, know-how and vigorous new energy to take the site to the next level.

I should also note that the Twitter feed and Facebook pages associated with P2L have also been signed over, so if you would still like to follow me personally, my new personal feed is at www.twitter.com/THEdanrichard and I will be actively posting what’s happening in my world and will continue to educate and write articles on items of interest in the internet world. So please be sure to hit me up on Twitter and follow my feed.

Before I go any further, I really need to thank everyone that has been involved with Pixel2life over the years… I have made literally thousands of new friends (and a handful of enemies) since starting P2L in 2003 and I have gained a wealth of knowledge and practical experience that no formal education could HOPE to provide me. I can’t say enough about the amazing staff of P2L and their dedication to the product, you guys have been the hidden pulse of the site since P2L became more than a one man show and I thank you all so very much. I also need to thank all the members, the P2L die hards, our affiliates, advertisers and the entire tutorial community that embraced P2L and eventually made us the authoritative search portal for tutorials geared towards web design, graphic design and programming. At our peak, P2L was serving 30,000 visitors a day, had a Google PR of 7 and an Alexa rating of 6000 something… I don’t care who you are, that is a huge achievement that could only be reached because of the support and dedication of everyone around me. So again, thanks so much guys, it’s been one hell of a ride, time to see where the next roller-coaster will take me.

So what’s happening now? I’m now working for an amazing company here in Montreal called Manwin Canada and I am a product manager for some of their extremely large website properties. Basically it’s what I was doing for P2L, but for some of the largest websites on the web! This is a huge opportunity for me and I am beyond thrilled at being offered a home at Manwin and being at the helm of some amazing websites.

That’s it for now guys… lunch is over so time to get back at it. I’ll still be around and always available although my response time may be slightly delayed due to my new schedule, but I do read just about everything thrown my way, I promise!

Take care everyone!
Dan

PS. No I won’t be starting any new tutorial sites… I want to focus 100% on my Manwin duties and I’ve signed a non-competition clause stating no tutorial sites for 2 years.

A yes the rumors are true… a few of you have asked me if I was indeed on the hunt for a new fulltime position and the short answer is a yes. Creating and running the P2L network has been the single most rewarding experience in my life and I have made so many friends, learned so many new things and have expanded my web and project management experience beyond anything I could have expected. But lately things have been a bit stale for me and I yearn for to be challenged again, to be learning from industry professionals and mentoring those that can learn from me, and to be surrounded by other professionals in their field and work in a team that humms in perfect harmony. Working from home is an amazing experience, filled with some fairly obvious advantages… but it’s also hidden with a load of disadvantages that one may not realize exist until you’ve run a few miles on your own. I’ve been working autonomously now for 6 years, and I have to admit.. it’s damn well lonely. There’s no water cooler banter, no lunchtime chit chat about the latest industry fads, no personal collaboration between co-workers, and basically no face to face interaction aside from the occasional FedEx guy dropping off a box of product for a review or something.

Granted I have a ton of friends on MSN and chat daily with Adam and Nick regarding various projects, but anyone in my shoes can tell you it’s just not the same.

I also feel I’ve hit a plateau in terms of learning new trends and technology and the job has become rather tedious and repetitive and has been for a couple of years.  Sure I can read a book or an online tutorial to learn some new goodies, which I do, but it’s nowhere near the same as practical experience and on-the-job training.  There’s a whole new level of excitement and challenge that comes with HAVING to learn something in the next 24 hours to get that mission critical objective completed that simply can’t be replaced by leisurely flipping through a magazine sitting at my desk in shorts with the only deadline on my mind is when I should start cooking up dinner.

I’m also challenged in my job as I have a HUGE range of experience in so many levels of IT and web development that I have no actual specialization, and that apparently is what most companies are looking for.  I can manage a 20 person helpdesk as effectively as I can sit down and design a web layout.  You can throw me in front of a crowd of 500 people and I’ll confidently and comforably sell a piece of proprietary miracle making hardware just as easily as I can build a server room, wiring and all, from scratch.  In fact I could completely renovate pretty much any room in the building, including installing some spiffy new ceramic in the washroom!  I’ve installed traffic counting systems and POS hardware in retail stores of all sizes across North America, managed install teams and have been coordinating programmers and graphic artists in web related project management roles for years.  I also love photography and have built massive posters and banners for trade show booths, right now from taking the product photography and doing all the post editing to managing the printing of said pieces.  I guess this makes me a jack of all trades… but as my old boss used to tell me, ace of all!  Heck I even have modeling experience, how many IT managers have THAT on their resume or CV?

But truly my passion lies in web technology, social media and online community development… it’s a blast and ever-changing.  I myself have been really looking at SEO, analytics, social media development and other trends in my personal time and I find it absolutely fascinating.  These are all things I would LOVE to bring in to play at P2L however my inability to code really cuts the legs out from under me.  In fact I am hoping that once I find fulltime employment that I can take some part-time programming courses in PHP, HTML, CSS and Javascript.  I simply no longer have the funds to hire developers for the amount of time I need to get my conceived projects from the back burner to the loading dock.  Now obviously this doesn’t mean P2L will crash and burn to the ground but it’s direction and mission will certainly change in the near future.  Even now plans are being made that will completely change pixel2life.com as we look at changing it’s format and moving the entire tutorial index to a new domain.  Of course whether that ever comes to fruitition is a whole different story, but man if I could snap my fingers and make it happen, oh mamma would it be cool!

2010 was a HUGE year of personal change for me as you probably know.. divorce, new house (well, new OLD house), financial ouchies and an amazing new relationship with someone I could only DREAM existed.  Looks like 2011 is going to be a year of professional change and growth.  It’s safe to say I’m a tad nervous and scared, but the overwhelming feeling is pure excitement and confidence as I look ahead to what will only be success.  It reminds me when I was younger and played league sports…  you arrived on the field and start to warm up with your teammates.  Your heart is driving a million miles a minute as the wind blows through your helmet.. your pads and buckles creak with every movement as you stretch and drive blood in to your muscles.  You dig your cleats in to the springy turf as you tilt your head back and forth, cracking your neck and eyeing the opposing team and smile to yourself knowing that only victory is coming.  It’s not arrogance, it’s positive thinking… you know this is your moment, this is your day and forever will the world be open to you and anyone else willing to strive through life filled with confidence in one’s self and the determination to always better yourself and those around you.  Bring forth the challenges, I look forward to change and I welcome the unknown!

So my dear friends, wish me luck as I wish nothing but success and fortitude on all of you, and as always, thank you so much for all your kindness and support over the years for everything I’ve ever done.

All the best!
Dan

Good morning everyone! It is my extreme pleasure and pride to announce that after years of requests from the P2L community, we have finally launched professional hosting services backed by the same people that keep the Pixel2life Studios network up and running for the last 7 years. I would like to introduce you to P2LHosting.com!

For the last 3 years or so, folks have been asking us and telling us that we should definitely look in to website hosting as a means of revenue to help fund this site and out other projects. In all honesty, I was against this venture from the start, my knee-jerk response being “are you out of your mind?!”. My biggest concern was customer service. I didn’t want to start a hosting company and build up a client list that I couldn’t maintain or keep up with, then destroy my reputations as well as the reputation of the P2L organization. All too many companies start with the best of intentions, but crash and burn when the reality is that trouble does tend to happen at 3AM, not when you’re bright-eyed and bushy tailed at 1PM.

So how did we resolve this? P2L has partnered with a professional server management company in order to provide you with 24 hour, 365 days a year technical support with full response time guarantees and unparalleled service to all of our clients. Our datacenter is located in the Infomart telecom hotel, a private, Tier III, N+1 facility near downtown Dallas and has a capacity for over 40,000 servers!

WEB HOSTING

P2L Hosting is offering 4 hosting packages suitable for new webmasters to seasoned veterans that need some serious resources to keep their sites running at optimum levels. With our Light, Medium, Heavy and Heavy Plus plans, we can accommodate any sized website. All accounts include cPanel management and Heavy/Heavy Plus include FREE domain registration for the life of your account! You can check out all our plans at http://www.p2lhosting.com/plans

DEDICATED SERVERS

Need some serious dedicated horsepower? We also offer dedicated servers on a case-by-case basis. Our dedicated server plans are customized to each client and are not sold directly from our site interface. We will work with you to choose the appropriate hardware based on your needs (We offer dozens of hardware configurations in Opteron and Xeon flavors with single, dual and quad core processors) and decide on the management requirements of your machine.

OTHER SERVICES

P2L Hosting is also proud to offer server management and CMS upgrade management services. If you own or plan to own a dedicated server running WHM/cPanel but you’re not sure how to secure it, optimize it, maintain it and/or what to do if you run in to technical problems, we can help! Whether you purchase your server with us or not, we can provide you monthly server management for what most sysadmins would charge for an hour of labor!

Can’t stand keeping track of and installing updates to your CMS software? Forums, Blogs and website CMS software all require updates to remain secure and optimized and sometimes this can be confusing, frustrating or simply ignored until you run in to serious problems. For pennies a day, you can have P2L keep track of your software and we’ll update it as soon as updates and patches are released!

Check out all the details on our services at http://www.p2lhosting.com/services

P2L Hosting also includes a fully automated client portal, allowing our clients to submit support tickets, view our knowledge database, upgrade accounts and view your billing options and much more! We will also be introducing new incentives for our hosting customers, such as free premium P2L accounts, swag and prizes and surprise free month’s worth of service at random! And because P2L is a community oriented network, you’ll find updates and news about our hosting offers and contests throughout our social media outlets such as Twitter, Facebook and here on our forums.

Join the P2L network and host your website with P2LHosting.com for safe, secure and fast service and see the difference solid customer service can make.

Thanks!
Dan

Hey all!  Wow can't believe I haven't updated this blog since February, that's pretty sad on my part!  I have been active here and there, but mostly I have been involved in renovations and off-site related activities that have me completely removed from the front of a computer and my inbox.  Now I know most of you know that at the beginning of the year I was separating from my wife, looking for a new house and trying to figure out what to do with P2L, my professional life and everything else in between.  Well, I am happy to report that things have been going VERY well and I am happier now than ever.

In terms of the housing situation, I was able to sell off a vast amount of my collection and pay off all my dept and get a downpayment for a new house, which I bought and moved in to February 12th or so.  The house is located in Montreal near Corina's school and it's quite a bit of a fixer-upper.  I couldn't hope to afford a decent sized place that was in fantastic condition, so I was looking for something with a great floorplan and could be renovated like I wanted over the next year or two.  The place I found was exactly that, but good Lord there's a TON of work to be done.  I posted a bit on the teardown of the nasty coldroom back in March on the P2L forums, you can read that by clicking HERE!

Later in that same month I took on a condo renovation project that lasted about a month… this was a near complete rebuild of a 2 bedroom condo, I actually stripped the bathroom right down to the wall studs!  This was actually a great opportunity for me to learn a few things that ill be later applied to my house, so it was a fun project.  My girlfriend Maibbeth would come by to check up on me, bring me lunch and/or cheer me on.  One time I got busted working.. well… not very hard:

A couple of weeks ago it started getting pretty crazy and I was burning out… it was definitely time for a vacation so I could get my head back in the game and unwind a bit.  I had been going several months nonstop on a rollercoaster ride so a break with my baby was definitely in order.  I will say this right now… Maibbeth is the only reason I didn't lose my mind with all this.  She has been the most amazing, supportive and loving person I could have ever hoped for, and I will never forget everything she's helped be through.  Love you baby!  So, we booked a last minute vacay down south… to Varadero, Cuba!

I've been back for a couple of weeks now and been struggling to catch up and get back at it… still finishing a few details at the condo project, then I will be back at it at my place fixing up the coldroom and then attacking the bathroom upstairs, but I will be back online as well balancing my online life and work with personal stuff.  I just wanted to let you guys know that I am in very good shape mentally and physically and things are going well beyond my expectations.  I want to thank everyone again for their amazing support at the beginning of the year and thanks to all of you that continue to show your friendship.  You've all been AMAZING and I owe you all so much.  So here's to you *raises glass* and I look forward to bringing you more content, reviews and laughs in the near future!

My sincerest thanks and best wishes,
Dan