Web Design and Wordpress Theme Development
I began designing websites about four years ago and for the past two years I’ve focused primarily on learning the ins and outs of WordPress theme design.
I like WordPress for most of my smaller clients because the interface is very user-friendly. I feel fairly comfortable handing the site over when it’s finished with some basic instructions, knowing that the client will be able to maintain the site themselves and not have to rely on a webmaster to make regular updates.
I also do static XHTML/CSS design work and some Javascript (I especially like jQuery), PHP and MySQL, and I’m learning Drupal right now—hoping to build a site with that in the near future to utilize all of that new knowledge.
Here are some recent sites I’ve worked on:
wfiu.org
The new homepage design for WFIU Public Radio. The station is a mixed format: NPR news, classical music and jazz, so in this homepage design I try to give equal weight to “news” and “arts and culture” programming.
There’s also a standard sidebar, header, and footer which will be used sitewide and form the basis of a WordPress MU template. Thanks to Ryan Faubion of Actuel Design who contributed to this design.
malcolmmobutusmith.com
An artist site and online portfolio for ceramic artist Malcolm Mobutu Smith, a member of the faculty at the IU School of Fine Arts.
This site posed an interesting challenge in dealing with all of the image galleries. I built the site in WordPress and used a great plug-in called NextGen Gallery to let the artist maintain the galleries himself.
bernardgordillo.com
A musician site for Harpsichordist Bernard Gordillo. This a really basic WordPress theme that I’m going to expand somewhat later this summer to include a blog and a few other pages.
For now, I like the simplicity of this design, and I was glad to be able to incorporate one of Bernard’s favorite pieces of music into the design.
josiebloss.com
A site for young adult author Josie Bloss. This design is based on a free WordPress theme by Infektia.net.
I did the homepage design, banner image and logo design, and customized the theme somewhat to allow for prominent placement of her first book (including amazon affiliate links, so she can make additional revenue on her book sales). I also took her author photo.
nightlights.blogs.wfiu.org
Night Lights is a weekly jazz program on WFIU and this site was my first test with WordPress to see how easy it would be to train a producer in regularly updating their own site. The producer of the show, David Brent Johnson, is now a pretty widely respected jazz blogger and the site seems to work fairly well for him and for users.
This design is a very customized version of a popular free WordPress theme called MistyLook. I did all of the customization work and original design.
adampschweigert.com
Of course, I also did the design for this site. It’s a work in progress and historically has been a sandbox for ideas I’m not ready to try out yet on client sites.
This redesign is nearly finished, but I’m still planning to add a blog, photo galleries, and some other stuff—be sure to stop back!
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