Cottage Tips provides useful information to help cottage owners take full advantage of their properties, and have a great time while at it!

For this website, I first had to create a logo. The owner wanted a logo that would be friendly, and convey the idea of the great outdoors:

Cottage Tips' Logo

Also, since the website’s content changes on a regular basis, the client needed to be able to update the site on his own. WordPress is a very flexible platform that allows site owners to maintain their own content without having to know much about coding.

To generate revenue, Cottage Tips features content-relevant banner ads. The client has the option to set up ads by tip category, or specific to each tip. To achieve this, WordPress was integrated with OpenX which allow webmasters to manage different advertisers in one place.

Since the goal of Cottage Tips is to create a vibrant community where people can comment and exchange ideas, a forum was added to the site: Cottage Tips’ Teams. bbPress is the forum by the creators of WordPress, and it fits like a glove. Users who register in the forum can also comment on blog posts, and create their own profiles.

Cottage Tips' Teams

Other features of the site include:

• Polls: people can vote on questions posed by the editor.
• Shopping: a list of goods and services recommended by the editor.
• Search: full functioning search engine.
• Tips Archive: where all tips are posted by category.
• Social Networking: people can share tips and blog posts via Facebook, Twitter, e-mail, etc.
• Backups: automatic backups are generated, and saved into Dropbox.

Christopher Edward Brower is a fine art photographer who specializes in panoramic photography. He wanted a website where he could sell prints of his work, and offer his services.

To save time and money, we started off with an existing template by iThemes:

Photo Gallery ThemeSeries - Original Theme

Chris modified the design in Photohosp to fit his needs.

Gallery Page

All that was left was for me to code the changes, and add the e-commerce capability. Each photograph has its own order page.

Product Page

To make the site more dynamic, the home page has a custom-made jQuery slideshow featuring the latest photographs.

ZenFri Inc: Summer-Day Layout

ZenFri Inc. is a Creative Arts & Entertainment Company. Their portfolio includes works in film, print, new media, and literature. They had a very clear idea of how their website would look and function, so they hired me to bring their vision to fruition.

The website for ZenFri Inc. is quite unique. They hired a talented illustrator to create the graphics that frames the site. I was to have these images fill the screen seamlessly, no matter the monitor size. These graphics also change based on time of day and season:

ZenFri Inc: Summer-Night Layout

ZenFri Inc: Winter-Day Layout

ZenFri Inc: Winter-Night Layout

Also, given the cutting edge nature of their work, the site also has iPhone/iPod support:

ZenFri Inc: iPhone Layout

In addition to the portfolio, the site also includes:

• A small store for selling t-shirts, and some of their art
• Lightbox modal windows to display their portfolio pieces, and staff bios
• A blog-style news section
• Space-saving accordion animations to show and hide sub-sections in pages
• Social networking integration
• Search capabilities

Digital Learning is a consulting company that specializes in providing on line learning solutions. They needed a new corporate image to set them apart from the competition, and give them a more professional look.

Unlike most of my clients, the people at Digital Learning are coding experts. They knew how to code their site, but they needed me to design their logo, business cards, stationary, and website.

Custom Logo Design

Using Dreamweaver, I created a template that they used as a base for all their pages.

I need a place where I can post all my knitting and crochet musings. I ended up with much more: a bilingual site with tutorials, patterns (for sale and free), and my musings.

Sidebar Tools

I used WordPress to create a blog in both English and Spanish. Some of the features of this site include:

• Project gallery using the Ravelry API and SmoothGallery
• Custom theme
• Pattern catalogue integrated with PayPal to accept payments
• Text resizing for accessibility
• Article sharing via Email and social network sites
• RSS feeds and email newsletter for new content notifications
• Google Ads integration

Pattern for Sale

Swiss Hospitality Training is a global educational firm that offers a broad range of premium quality training and consulting services.

They had a site set up and running in Joomla, but they didn’t quite like its design. I redesigned the existing theme to meet my clients’ expectations.

My client wanted a simple blog to increase his personal brand awareness as a hospitality and marketing educator.

He liked the format and layout of an existing theme (Connections), but he wanted to have softer, calmer design, and a custom header graphic.

Original Connections Theme

By using an existing theme as a base, I was able to create a theme much faster, and cheaper than if I had started from scratch.

I also integrated social networking into the theme, via links at the top of the sidebar to the client’s profiles, and with bookmark links at the bottom of every article.