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

Posted In: Blog, Custom Blogs, Web Design.
Tags: clients, custom web design, web clients, web design, WordPress

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

Posted In: Blog, WordPress Development.
Tags: clients, custom web design, web clients, web design, wedding photography blog, WordPress Themes

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

Posted In: Blog, Custom Blogs, Web Design.
Tags: clients, custom blog, custom web design, photography blog, web clients, web design, wedding photography blog

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

Posted In: Blog, Custom Blogs, Web Design.
Tags: clients, custom, custom web design, photography blog, web clients, web design, wedd, wedding photography blog, WordPress

WARNING: If you're not a CSS or WordPress geek, this post could be a little boring and tech-heavy to you. You can read the quick and easy version here. Or... VIEW LIVE DEMO DOWNLOAD (.zip) Why yet another Free WordPress Theme? As I have developed more and more sites, I have found myself repeating a lot of steps just to get started. I tried a few themes that other designers have made available with the promise of being a good starting point but was never happy with any of them. The Problem with other starting point themes The inspiration for this theme came because I saw others attempting to offer emptied out, basic themes as a starting point, or complex theme frameworks. Some were out of date and needed updating to be compatible with the latest versions of WordPress. Some were packed with options and settings within the admin area. These are great for someone with out

Posted In: Articles, WordPress, WordPress Themes.
Tags: blogstarter, free downloads, Free WordPress Themes, photoshop templates, web design, WordPress, WordPress Themes, WPJumpStart

GridStarter is a Photoshop template used to make the initial layout of a new website easier and more efficient. Through a series of grid overlays, it is possible to very quickly and easily line up page elements and make view them the way they will be seen in a browser. I personally use this on any original design I do and can not remember the time before I used it. It truly transformed the way I approach web design, sped up my design time, and improved my designs in ways that I did not predict. Download GridStarter (.zip) GridStarter ScreenCasts THE BASIC CONCEPT: The idea is to base everything on a 960px wide layout which is considered the safe maximum width in order to be visible on the majority of screens. Sure there are widescreens 1920px wide, but most people will not be viewing your site on that big of a screen. The 960px layouts uses

Posted In: Downloads.
Tags: free downloads, photoshp templates, starter grid, web design, website starters, WPJumpStart

Every so often I get the chance to work on a project that means a lot to me and this one is definitely one of those. Every Monday Matters started as a book, written by Matt Emerzian and Kelly Bozza, highlighting an idea a week for ways to improve your life and the world around you. Think of the word-a-day calendars but this is is an idea-a-week, with things like Learn CPR, Thanking a Firefighter, or just Reading More. The site has been growing more popular and looks like it will continue now that they have a weekly column on the Huffington Post and some other big sites are going to start running weekly posts as well. From a design standpoint, I didn't have much to do on this one. We started with the Revoltion Theme for Wordpress and fixed some of the colors and layout. Most of what I did was

Posted In: Featured, Web Design.
Tags: clients, web clients, web design, WordPress

Just a quick screenshot for now. I'm off to Vegas for the WPPI convention, where we are introducing abrand new JulesCafe.com.

Posted In: Blog, Web Design.
Tags: clients, custom web design, html, php, web clients, web design, WordPress

Sauce Creative Group does some great design work for some major brands, including a lot of recent work with Redbull. So when they asked me to help turn their design into a Wordpress site, it was a great opportunity for me - not to mention a chance to just build a site and not worry about the design process myself. The biggest job I had on this was creating the fading slideshow at the top of every page. I found a sample site that had something similar, but i had to tweak the code to be more flexible. Now it reads any image uploaded to the right folder. So all they have to do is upload some new images and they have a new slideshow. I will try to add a description of what I did, because it is a pretty slick addition to any site and is user-friendly enough for

Posted In: Blog, Featured, WordPress Development.
Tags: clients, web clients, web design, WordPress

I had a nice surprise in my inbox today. Apparently Five Day DVD is a featured design on We Love WP (WeLoveWP.com) - a site that showcases custom Wordpress sites. Only a few days ago, I found the site and browsed all the amazing work on there, getting inspiration and ideas for my own designs. They had a section where you could submit your own site, let them know about it and if they like it, they would include it on their page. Well, I guess they did, because here it is: Five Day DVD was my first go at Wordpress and to have it noticed on a site like this means a lot. It took me so long to get it to look like it does! I have big plans for a new site which I plan to do all in Wordpress. Plus - I am working on my first custom theme, built from

Posted In: Blog, Web Design.
Tags: custom web design, html, personal projects, php, web clients, web design, WordPress