Hello,

A routine check by the Design Kingdom admins showed a bug with the registration component: some users have not been able to register on the website.

We will therefore shut down the site for a core system maintenance period of about 1 hour on Sunday, 9th August 2009 from 10pm - 11pm, East African Time.

Users will not be able to access the website during that period.

Our sincerest apologies for any inconvenience.

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The Design Kingdom Team

We have been working feverishly behind the scenes to create a bigger and better online community for Ugandan designers to connect, share, explore and grow in skill and in passion.

So, we've launched the new Design Kingdom website, but...

We're sure you've noticed the empty categories and galleries and sections and ... well, you get the picture.

We need volunteers to post tutorials, articles, news, and generally share stuff. You can either submit your own tutorial, or send us a link to an excellent tutorial or article you've seen online.

You can contribute once a month, once a year, or a million times a week, as long as it's design related, we will appreciate your contribution!

If you think you can take on this challenge, then we need you!

There are two ways to contribute:

1. Submit the article yourself.
Once you sign up and sign in, you get a menu link that will appears on the right. You can click "Submit Article" and directly submit and article to Design Kingdom. The menu also alllows you to do all sorts of cool stuff, like customise your profile, submit articles, create your own showcase and communicate with other designers.

2. Send us the article.
Too lazy busy to write? Send us the article and we will post it up!

We look forward to your contribution!

Ladies and gentlemen, for your consideration (and viewing pleasure), I give you, Design Kingdom v2.

For over 2 years, we've experimented with different platforms, different update methods, different ideas, twice the site had to be taken offline because it just wasn't working. When you have a passion for excellence, pleasing yourself can be the most difficult thing.

We finally decided that trying to build a system from scratch was going to take way too long and cost way too much. So we settled on the functionality of Joomla!, and got a very decent template from JoomlArt. It is a start, and the only way is up.

On top of the articles, tutorials and features, Design Kingdom has support for:

• User registration
• Discussion Forums
• Community connections
• Portfolio / Showcase galleries

So, now that we have about 85% of the technical aspects out of the way, we're focusing on content.

We're working around the clock to profile talented Ugandan artists, we're scouring the internet for interesting and relevant design tutorials, we're looking for and writing articles to help designers start their own businesses, but most of all, our biggest moment will be the day we see the community grow and thrive and interact with each other, both online and offline.

Right now, most of the content is from other websites, but we believe with time, we will get tutorials and articles that are home-grown and make Design Kingdom truly local.

So, for now, welcome to Design Kingdom, take a look around, signup, join the forums, submit interesting articles, showcase your work... and become the designer you were born to be!

We look forward to interacting with you.

The Design Kingdom Team