Freelance Projects

Housemadehome.net Website

Wednesday, May 19th, 2010

I have finished up another website for a client of mine (my wife), designed for her blog called housemadehome.net. The blog chronicles the renovations and decorating of our house, some recipes, and stories associated with the raising of our family. I worked really closely with her on the design of the site and I think it came out really well. I developed it using the WordPress backend, so she could easily make posts to it and handle the whole site by herself. We focused a lot on search engine optimization and the site has had a really good start so far… she has over 15 followers already. There are tons of home design blogs out there and they are getting bigger all the time. If you are looking for a custom made blog template, contact me so we can discuss the details of the project.

Cya

InVeritas Website

Thursday, May 13th, 2010

inveritas-website

I have recently just finished working on another freelance website for a company called InVeritas. InVeritas Research & Consulting, Inc., is a national research and consulting firm specializing in strategic communications, political polling and research, government relations, grassroots/grasstops organizing, press relations and message development. This client had a very specific vision in mind about how they wanted their website to look and feel, and it was my job to make that vision come  true.

This website is built on top of a wordpress backend so they can easily make posts or news alerts whenever they want. I used several wordpress plugins in the development of this site. For the menu I used the PixoPoint Menu Plugin which is a really great wordpress menu plugin. This plugin comes with tons of customization options and allows you to easily add your own custom dropdown menu to any WordPress site. At first it was a little difficult to work with  but in the end it did exactly what I needed for it to do. Another plugin I used was the  Redirection Plugin which is used  to manage 301 redirections, keep track of 404 errors, and generally tidy up any loose ends your site may have.  I also used the Exec-PHP plugin to allow me to run any php code thats in posts, pages and text widgets. The final plugin I used was the .html on Pages WordPress plugin, which adds “.html” to the end of all the pages on the site.

I always try to learn something new from any project I undertake, and this one was no exception. The main thing to  realize when building or creating something for a client is that its really important to work with the client and give them exactly what they want, because in the end they are the ones paying for it. It i s hard sometimes because what they want isn’t always the easiest, quickest, or best solution. Its important to tell the client what they need to know to make the best decision though.

I worked with Kinetic Media Solutions again on this project and I enjoyed working with InVeritas as well.

Cya

Corner Pocket Farms Website

Tuesday, January 12th, 2010

Happy New Year! I have finished another website for a client. The website is Corner Pocket Farm, and they offer premium duck, goose, and deer hunting and accommodations. The site has two main parts, the main corporate site and then a sub webpage that is all about hunting. I developed this site using wordpress as a backend once again because of all the options it allows me and the designer was Charles Richardson, www.artofcharlesrichardson.com.   Some of the special things about this site was the use of several really nice plugins. The more I look into plugins for wordpress the more I am impressed with their ease of use as well as what they can do. One of the plugins I used is called, Shadowbox JS, and I used it on the hunting part of the website for the Photo Gallery. Shadowbox  supports all of the web’s most popular media publishing formats and it is written entirely in JavaScript and CSS and is highly customizable. Here are some pictures of the site. I also use ShadowboxJS on my website for any images and flash files.

Double S Carpet & Supply Website

Wednesday, November 4th, 2009

I have finished working on another website while working with Cody Scott of Kinetic Media Solutions, its called Double S Carpet and Supply. I implemented and developed this website once again using the WordPress backend.   There are several reasons I love using the wordpress backend on these types of projects. One reason is that they have tons of widgets or plugins to use for free, and this saves me time if the client wants a certain feature. I used the Flash Video Player Plugin for the video on the front page, it has some really great features like hiding the controls and auto play, and you can easily change all these settings on the settings page on the dashboard of wordpress, it doesn’t get much easier than that.

Cody and I each came up with a design for this site and I have attached the images below, mine is the second. For my design, I used an image called “Dark Wood” by ~zygat3r from deviantART as the background but in the end we decided to go with Cody’s Design.

doubleswebsite doubleswebsiteV2

Lime Aid Partnership Website

Wednesday, September 23rd, 2009

I have finished working on another website for a client named Shannon Jacuzzi. The website is LimeaidPartnership, and it’s purpose is to  promote national awareness of stress and mental health issues during May Mental Health month and year-round through community events, promotions and campaigns that help raise funds to support organizations that educate the public about the brain, provide mental health services, and/or research treatments and causes of mental health stressors. I designed the site completely myself based off a flyer the client gave me and I developed it using the wordpress framework. Once again, thank you wordpress for building such an awesome CMS. Here I used the wordpress backend so the user could go onto the site herself and make updates as well as change any of the content on the pages.

limeaidpartnershipWebsite