Fuel Your Blogging is very pleased to welcome Christopher Rice into his new role as Co-Editor.

Christopher is no stranger to the Fuel network. He has contributed several fantastic articles to Fuel Your Blogging, as well as to Fuel Your Writing, and has been an active member of the community for over a year. Moving into his new role, Christopher will join Brandon Cox in overseeing the passionate team and taking Fuel Your Blogging to the next level.

Christopher is an abstract painter and publisher by trade, and sells his artwork online at his gallery. He also spends much of his time on projects focused on helping to bring writers and bloggers together and giving advice on how best to promote their work. These projects include ScribblePlay, a site unleashing the power of collaborative fiction, and CreativeBlogger, a blog dedicated to helping creative artists make a living from their work through social media and the web.

Christopher believes in the importance of adding value, of engaging with people and making personal connections, which makes him a perfect fit in the Fuel family.

Everyone at Fuel wishes Christopher the best of luck in his new role!

With many of us currently celebrating the festive season, the Fuel team would like to take this opportunity to wish readers across our sites a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year, and to thank all of you, on behalf of our editors and writers, for your continuing support. We hope that those of you celebrating Christmas received plenty of awesome gear to help your creative juices flow in 2011!

All of us in the Fuel team are glad that so many of you continue to gain inspiration and advice from our sites, and we are pleased and proud to fuel your creative endeavors. Hopefully they have all been successful this year and, if not, that you’ve learnt valuable lessons and haven’t given up!

We hope that you have all been able to spend some time with your family and friends this holiday season, and our fingers are crossed for those of you who are having to travel through any bad weather in order to see your loved ones. Take care, relax and enjoy the holidays! Thanks to everyone for being a part of Fuel. Here’s to a great 2010, and an even better 2011!

Merry Christmas, and a Happy New Year!

Fuel Your Photography is proud to welcome Patrick Onofre into his new role as Editor.

Patrick has been a regular contributor for Fuel Your Photography for several months, writing articles covering a range of topics including working with clients and the importance of getting your work out there. Moving into his new editorial role, Patrick will oversee a passionate team of photographers, and work closely with them to take Fuel Your Photography to the next level.

Based in Arlington, Virginia, Patrick graduated from Johnson and Wales with an Associate’s degree in Culinary Arts and a Bachelor’s degree in Food Service Management, which led to a ten-year-long career in the catering industry. Recently, Patrick left catering behind to live his other passion, photography, and pursue a career as a freelance photographer.

Patrick likes to photograph every-day things, to remind himself and everyone who sees his photos of the beauty that we all encounter in our lives that we may not notice until we stop to look. He also brings his passion for food to his photography, aiming to take “stunning photographs that make you want to eat the picture you’re viewing.” Patrick shares his work and blogs about his experiences on his online portfolio.

Everyone at Fuel wishes Patrick the best of luck in his new role!

Fuel Your Illustration is proud to welcome Nikki Jeske and Rondal Scott III into their new roles as Co-Editors.

Nikki and Rondal are not completely new faces; they have both been regular contributors to Fuel Your Illustration since around the beginning of the year. Both of them will share the editing and running of the site, as well as still contributing articles.

Both are web designers by trade, and certainly know a thing or two about illustrating and making your websites, logos and anything else you like looking awesome. Nikki works from Design Coyote and Rondal through GhostlabDS. Both are self-confessed Twitter addicts, follow them both here and here.

When they’re not creating awesome web design and working on Fuel Your Illustration, Rondal indulges his inner-child at his site Strange Kids Club, and Nikki draws, draws, draws – especially dogs! – over at The Family Menagerie.

Everyone at the FUEL Network wishes them the best of luck in taking Fuel Your Illustration from strength to strength!

Fuel’s own Doug Neiner, editor for Fuel Your Coding, has just been officially accepted as part of the jQuery Project team.

The project team is made up from various volunteers who all desire to see jQuery, a fast and concise JavaScript Library that simplifies HTML documents traversing, event handling and animating, become the best JavaScript tool possible.

Doug specializes in jQuery enhancements and front-end design, recently sharing his expert advice on the jQuery Widget Factory UI on Microsoft’s new Script Junkie blog. He joins the jQuery Project as part of their Infrastructure and Design Team. He will be helping to design and maintain the jQuery online properties, which include http://jquery.com and http://jqueryui.com.

In Doug’s own words: “I just really respect the team, so to be a part of it is so tremendously awesome!”

Doug with most of the team at JQCon

There is no question that his love of all things jQuery put him in excellent company. Congratulations Doug!

Officially launched just a few days ago, Script Junkie is the new blog from Microsoft offering relevant and expert advice to web developers. Among these experts, Fuel Your Coding Editor Doug Neiner has written one of the first articles for the site.

In the article Doug explains how to build a stateful plugin,a plugin that maintains its own state and often acts to trigger certain events, using the jQuery UI Widget Factory. This tool works as a framework to assist the development of a plugin, creating helpful, consistent structure within which to work.

The Widget Factory, like many frameworks, is a tool to assist in rapid, maintainable development. Doug goes through a specific example, creating a countdown timer for a Content Management System, to show how to set and use options, initialize and destroy the widget as well as trigger custom events.

In Doug’s own words: “[Widget Factory] is really an amazing tool available to jQuery plugin developers and the best way to learn to use it is by… you guessed it… just using it!”

Look out for more Doug’s articles over at Script Junkie, and be sure to check out his more regular coding advice at Fuel Your Coding. Congratulations on the article, Doug!

Lots of exciting things going on today and I personally wanted to take a few minutes to let the creative community know what we’ve been up to lately. We’ve been searching for the perfect fit for Editors on Fuel Your Creativity for some time now. Now that doesn’t mean I’m going anywhere (you can’t get rid of me that easy!) but what it DOES mean is that your going to get twice as much amazing content from the talented Angie & Rob Bowen from Arbenting.

So from everyone at FUEL, welcome!

Rob Bowen, Co-Editor

You may already know him as Rob Bowen-Arbenting guru/writer/designer/stage performer/poet/hiker/husband extraordinaire. Okay, so maybe not so much the firsthand knowledge of the husband one…we’ll take Angie’s word on that. What we can attest to is Rob’s talent as a writer and designer and his dedication to bringing FYC readers all of the latest news from the design arena. Count on interviews with the world’s top creatives, reviews of the hottest programs and gadgets and articles on things that make those light bulbs turn on over the heads of our creative comrades.

FOLLOW ROB ON TWITTER: FUEL YOUR CREATIVITY | ROB BOWEN

Angie Bowen, Co-Editor

As one of the genius minds behind the Arbenting sites, freelance web designer Angie Bowen knows a thing or two about creative inspiration. In her position as Co-Editor of FYC with her husband Rob, Angie will share her many years of design experience in exploring creativity with readers in the form of informative posts, in-depth interviews with fellow creative minds and more. If we’re lucky, maybe she’ll treat us to stories about and some pictures of her four furry catkids. After all, we’re one big happy family here at Fuel!

FOLLOW ANGIE ON TWITTER: FUEL YOUR CREATIVITY | ANGIE BOWEN

When lying in bed at night, do you find yourself dreaming of creative stuff? It’s ok, don’t be embarrassed. We won’t tell anyone. That probably just means you have a lot to say on the subject and you’re looking for the perfect way to get your information out there to the world. We don’t mean to pat ourselves on the back, but we’re that place! The Fuel Brand Network is always on the lookout for great guest writers who also happen to be kick-butt creatives. You’ll get your name known and expand your exposure. We’ve even been told the popular kids are now bugging some FUEL writers to sit at their lunch tables. Yes, we are THAT good for your rep.

Guest Writer Guidelines

• Posts must be original pieces, written for FUEL.
• Guest posts cannot be republished.
• Posts must be non-promotional. However, in return we will provide you a 50 word promotional by-line and space for a short bio that can be included at the bottom of Article.
• If you write one article a month you will also get an extended bio under ‘authors’ on the about page with a headshot and fuel avatar.
• Guest posts are unpaid.

How Do I Apply?

Please submit all requests to become a guest writer through our ‘contact’ form dropdown in the top navigation. Check the ‘Question’ box, and include your contact information, the site and the topics you would like to write about. We always try and get back with everyone. If we feel you are a good fit, we will get some more information from you and discuss guest writer opportunities.