ThoughtSparks » web design

Another Example of a WordPress Site

webadmin — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 15:55:09 +0000

It’s always fun to do a little show-and-tell. So class, today I want to show you my latest WordPress site. It’s for the IEEE EMC 2009 Symposium that our company, ETS-Lindgren is serving as one of the principal hosts. The site is just gaining steam and will have some pretty nifty code features in terms of scheduling, interactivity, visual tours etc. The graphic design was outsourced which was a real help in getting things moving. The niftiest feature on the site so far is the promo video which is a nice look at Austin. I had the pleasure of working with a local studio to manage and provide the creative direction for the project. The video imported nicely into Flash with progressive download enabling a higher resolution than embedding the video. This method of import resulted in a fairly nice end product for the web. The event takes place next summer so I’ll do a revist to the site sometime down the line when there’s more to talk about.

Evolution of a Website

webadmin — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 13:01:59 +0000

In an ideal world there would never be any do-overs. One thing I’ve learned from being a web developer in a corporation is that this is no ideal world. When the scope of a project or marketing campaign changes so must the web.

TechTourSite.com was originally a very small microsite of just a few pages with limited capabilities. I inherited the site from my predecessor a couple of years ago and it has been fascinating to see the scope of this initiative grow each year. Last year the site was redesigned to refine the look and feel and include more information on the site. Shortly thereafter it became obvious that the site needed a major overhaul as scope creep continued. Tech Tour is now an international event.

No surprise to any regular reader of thoughtsparks.net, the site was rebuilt in WordPress. It features some nifty plug-ins and functions:

Expandable side navigation
Eloquent form submission
Templates which allow for some nice multi-lingual options
Custom fields which come in real handy for unique datasets

The site will continue to grow incrementally with new features such as a photo gallery and other bells and whistles. I think I will truly enjoy not doing a major redesign or redevelopment of the site next year (knock on wood).

Lest my PhP development skills get too rusty, I’m starting on another microsite for the IEEE EMC Symposium for 2009 that will be hosted in Austin. More about that one as the project moves along. One cool feature will be a dynamic schedule configurator for attendees to select their workshops to attend. Will be a hoot to develop for sure.

Firebug Firefox Add-on Top Developer Tool

webadmin — Sun, 19 Aug 2007 07:10:23 +0000

A developer friend of mine turned me on to the Firefox Add-on Firebug. This tool, not only is invaluable for troubleshooting code for developers, it proved invaluable for revising thoughtsparks.net. This nifty plug-in allows one to walk through the code and stylesheet on the fly while looking at a page. In the sea of WordPress styles, it helped to sort out what div was affected and allowed for fairly rapid revision to my blog. I’ve used this tool in a more robust environment as well and can testify to it’s utility across the spectrum. Check it out at: getfirebug.com.

BTW, any thoughts on the newer look for thoughtsparks.net? I take an evolutionary approach to site revision…a little at a time.

CedarRidgeChurch.net Goes Live

webadmin — Fri, 23 Mar 2007 00:59:34 +0000

After working probably too many late nights, CedarRidgeChurch.net is live. The site was built using WordPress which made it technically easy to install. It just took a while to get the right direction and think through the future development of the site. Eventually the site will be extended-out as the church grows. It’s been fun to help start this new fellowship in a growing part of town and using tech skills for God is always a joy for me. The site will continue to go through visual refinement and development, we just needed to get something functional up quickly as we are moving to weekly services at a local middle school the beginning of April.

The rest of the church communication infrastructure is run on Google Apps. For more info on Google Apps and what it can do for an organization, read my blog entry "Why Google Apps is so Cool".

Number One Blog Flaw: Disabling Back Button

webadmin — Tue, 20 Mar 2007 05:21:51 +0000

OK, that may sound like an audacious statement to make. But disabling the back button on a website is a major no no. It is Hotel California, "You can check in any time you like, but you can never leave." Cool lyrics to a song, bad concept for web design. I wouldn’t rant about it, but that tactic is too alive and well on blog sites. Blogging has unfortuanetly revived some lost arts to poor web design and that would be the top of my list.