The new site for Stand Sound marks the third site in a row that I have made use of the powerful Flutter plugin for WordPress. Stand Sound is a company that offers post-production sound packages to film and tv productions and their new site needed to showcase information in ways that went beyond what the typical WordPress page is capable of. For their Projects, Personnel and Facilities pages, we needed a way to display images, information and links without being confined to the normal block of text. To accomplish this in a way that added to the design, made the information more readable and was still easy to edit from the backend, would not have been possible without the Flutter plugin, which allows you to create custom content types and then display those different content areas anywhere on the page. The Home Page The overall concept is meant to be a clean, modern View / Edit Comments

Teen Truth started as a video documentary by Horizon Intertainment, created by handing teens video cameras to get their take on school violence shortly after the Columbine massacre in '99. It has since grown into a series of documentaries and Teen Truth Live, a live motivational speaking event that has now spoken in front of millions of students across the country. Their website had been a static HTML site, difficult to update and lacking the ability to comment or interact in any way. Producers JC Pohl and Erahm Christopher asked their original designer, David Richards to update his original design and brought me on to program the site using WordPress as a backend. David's new design stayed true to the original idea and maintained the well-established brand of Teen Truth, while modernizing it, bringing some greatly improved navigation and adding some moving pieces that really bring the site to life. By View / Edit Comments

One of the great things about working with talented people is that the end product is something you wouldn't have been able to accomplish on your own. I have worked on several sites now with the talented brand and identity designer Ellen Petty of Identity Kitchen (see previous post with examples), all custom blogs designed by Identity Kitchen and programmed by myself using WordPress. But the site for Studio Diana is an all-in-one portfolio site and blog, the culmination of a lot of time and planning about what the ultimate possibilities of WordPress might be. With one login and only one site to edit, there is access to several categories of photo galleries, essentially unlimited pages, and a fully integrated blog. The design is customized on every page, with varying layouts and thumbnails for each section that really bring this site beyond the typical design. At the same time, the look View / Edit Comments

Over the last few months, I have done several projects in partnership with the talented brand and identity designer, Ellen Petty of  Identity Kitchen. It has been a great change of pace to have someone else provide the design, allowing me to focus on the programming and coding of the site. With all of our sites, we try to incorporate some level of social media interaction. Custom blogs generally get a Twitter feed with a custom design and prominent links to any other sites the client wants to feature. This could be Twitter, Facebook, Myspace, etc. Here is a look at a few of the projects: TheUnbride.com The Unbride is a blog that covers unusual wedding ideas, from all of the different vendors, to interesting venues, etc. Building the site took a lot of advanced Customization of WordPress using different views depending on which category we are viewing. See it in action here: http://theunbride.com/ TheUnbride.com Click 2 Comments »

This is a look at the custom blog for Plum Tree Studios, a photographer from Houston Texas. Once again matching an existing portfolio site, I was pretty contained for design options. I used some screen captures of her existing site to manufacture a background that resembled the one on the site. The color scheme was set as mostly black, with the few colors from the logo as highlights for text, links, borders around images, etc. A Look At the Site Click for larger Image A Look At the New Blog Click for larger Image Details: Social Media Links Details: Custom 404 Page As I explained in the post about another site, the 404 error page is one of the most overlooked aspects of any site. A site should be able to handle when something goes wrong. If you have ever reached a site that said something like 'The Page you are looking for can not be found," 3 Comments »

Here is a quick look at a blog I did for Andrena Photography. Based in Los Angeles Andrena is an amazing photographer, best known for her Indian Weddings. As proof, you will notice amongst the list of referrals on her blog, a listing for Elephant Rentals. With an existing website and a strong brand and logo already in place, I simply had to adjust colors and fonts to match the existing site. For the background image, I had to create a new image using the background of the current site, filling in the middle portion where the website sits. There were also some custom programming tweaks to make the menu work the way we wanted, fix the layouts of the category pages, etc. Then I added the standard set of WordPress plugins to help with optimizing the site's performance. For better visibility in the search engines, I added the All in One 2 Comments »

One of the most complex and intricate custom blogs I have put together so far was for Jules Bianchi Photography. Like most of my photographers in need of a custom blog, Jules had an existing and well established brand identity with a portfolio site already in place. Her blog however had been on Blogger, where customization and options are limited. A while back, I had also done a custom splash page for the main site, with links to all of her sites and the blog. A look at the Splash Page Click for larger image A look at the portfolio site Click for larger image A look at the Blog Click for larger image Details: Post Titles There were lots of little details that added to the finished blog, a combination of design elements and custom programming to add some life to the site. With a long list of posts in a blog-style layout, there is an opportunity to add View / Edit Comments

Most of the websites I have worked on over the last couple years have been built using WordPress, one of the best Content Management Systems available. It is extremely flexible and powerful, with great tools for Search Engine Optimization already built in. For a new user, however, it can be a little overwhelming once they log in for the first time. The WordPress backend is a little bit heavy and offers so many tools that it can be confusing for those new to the system. At first I was spending a lot of time on the phone talking clients through the same basic issues over and over. How do I add a new post? How do I create a new category? While these were new issues for them, I had to repeat myself over and over. So I put together a document that provides basic instructions for using WordPress and I have 3 Comments »

*****************THIS PROJECT IS NO LONGER ACTIVE ******************* I was brought on to 'Another Harvest Moon' in order to develop the website and build the social media component of the marketing campaign. This is an exciting opportunity for me to combine my interests in the film and web worlds. You can see the current website and trailer here: http://anotherharvestmoon.com/, although one of the first steps in the project is going to be a complete redesign of the site by Sauce Creative Group. Sauce will provide all the design elements and I will be programming the site using WordPress. This is a small indie film with a very small promotional budget but we are trying to create as much buzz as possible in order to help them get distribution. So we were looking for help with organizing and implementing an ambitious social media strategy. Please check out their sites: Official Webite: http://anotherharvestmoon.com Facebook: http://facebook.com/harvestmoonfilm Twitter: http://twitter.com/harvestmoonfilm Youtube: http://youtube.com/harvestmoonfilm

photo credit: srqpix While working on a client's site today, I had my first encounter with a nasty little hack that WordPress can be vulnerable to - hidden spam links injected into your site's content. Because the links are hidden, the only way to discover them is if you search for them or happen to come across them as you edit your posts through the HTML editor. What are Hidden Spam Links? They look like this: The trick is in the section: "style="display:none" - This hides the links from viewers, but reveals them to search engines. Once these spammers get hundreds of links to their sites, they are able to rank much higher in the search engine results. Why Hidden Spam Links Are Bad for Your Site Links coming to your site are good for Page Rank, an algorithm that Google and other search engines use to decide how relavant your site is. The opposite end 9 Comments »