A social network around building a immersive, unique environments should bring you right into the passion that drives the hobby. The Buddypress plugin extends Wordpress’ capabilities into social networking without abandoning what Wordpress does best, creating a highly customizable site that’s easy to manage.
Archive for the ‘CSS’ Category
Instrumental Music – in progress
not yet final
Retail — especially musical instrument retail — is known for trying to out scream the competition, but when your product is as gorgeous as a well-built guitar, perhaps the best a website can do is get out of the way. The counterbalance is that it’s very hard to establish a brand with a pallet of subtle grays. That’s where tasteful use of color allows the right elements to pop, while never getting in a shouting match.
Hardcore Fitness Blog
2010
Sometimes an established design just works and has the underlying structure solidly in place. Then all that’s needed to launch a new venture is a quick theme to give you access to all Wordpress‘ features without making your user feel as though they’re jumping to a completely new system. The existing site’s use of Yahoo’s YUI CSS can make the transition of the HTML to a new system completely painless with minimal original CSS.
Farm Advisor
2010
Some designs look great in Photoshop, but when the entire site is just one big image, it isn’t the most efficient use of HTML, to say nothing of standards compliance. Little compromises and creative use of CSS must be employed so that the spirit of the design is intact. An elegant fade here and a font replacement there are touches that can make the site beautiful from the outside, right down to the code.
(or standards complaint) (or standards complaint)
BOKU Weight Loss
2010
A promo site for a contest needs to tie into the core product’s site design and brand, while standing out as a unique and exciting event. Sometimes a lead image can accomplish this by communicating the core concepts of the contest while not actually presenting the product or contest format.
Polite Javascript gives above the fold calls to action without breaking the site for users who have scripting turned off.
Ventura All Star Blues Night
2009
The one page website always wants to grow beyond a single page. Location details, contact or signup forms, and other necessarily information can clutter the impact of a single, promotion focused page. Javascript can help hide a quick webform or other key information until the user is ready for it, while keeping the site crisp and refined.
Bellini
2009
Your choice of content management system can often come down a decision between flexibility and ease of use. By limiting options, Wordpress brings content management right down to the level that anyone can do it; Drupal provides a more robust system with a much higher learning curve. But more and more Wordpress plugins are being developed to help bridge that gap, and among the best is Role Scoper.
Some custom theme work and Role Scoper helped divy up Bellini’s store pages between location employees and regional managers.
DLX Networks
2009
Stock photos can be limiting and unnatural, but they can also liberate a site design from the confines of perfect gradients and the two dimensional layout required by most sites. An organic image of the actual client’s actual product is preferable, but on the other hand…who would’ve imagined there could be an attractive photo of a router?
Malaysia International Gourmet Festival
2009
One huge advantage with using Drupal is the fluidness and flexibility of “blocks.” Blocks are sometime dynamic pieces of content outside of the primary information being displayed on a particular page. The ability to place this content in unique locations on specific pages is a valuable resource in skilled hands.
BigGreenPie.com – site no longer available
Ad placement is proving to be more and more critical for content oriented sites. While we’d all love ads to be as unintrusive as possible, more and more users are comfortable looking past the flashing lights that surround their content. A more subtle, integrated approach is necessary to give users the information they’re looking for, and the site owner the revenue they need to keep going.
