Featured Author of the Week on ActiveDen

August 26th, 2010

Since joining ActiveDen, where you can buy and sell royalty-free Adobe Flash and Flex files, I have wanted to make the featured author of the week. I am proud to announce that I have finally achieved this goal of mine.  I am really honored and humbled to be chosen and want to thank Envato (The Company that owns  the marketplace) for selecting me, especially LanceSnider, the ActiveDen Site Manager. If you have ever thought about selling graphics, or wordpress themes, or anything of that nature then the Envato Marketplaces are the way to go.  These sites have the best community of authors and buyers.

Its really been amazing creating files and seeing people use them on their own sites, and  there is something really rewarding in it thats hard to articulate with words. Thanks again ActiveDen for the opportunity you give us and for the feature.

Cya

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The New DataPath Website

August 20th, 2010

First off, sorry I haven’t posted in a while, I have been super busy at work.  Speaking of work, I am currently employed at a company called DataPath, Inc. in Little Rock, AR as a “Marketing and Web Developer” and I love it.  About 5 months ago, I accepted a new project of redesigning and developing the company website, while integrating it with what was there already which included a backend CMS and SQL database. This was a huge undertaking because  it was originally developed in 1997 in dirty ASP.

This was very exciting for me because it was the first big project I undertook at the company, and it allowed me to show off my skills and worth  (plus I could learn a lot along the way).  Long story short, I got a redesign approved and started hacking away at developing.

Some of the special features I integrated or developed into the new site include:

  1. a new navigation system, which include the main drop down navigation as well as a side accordian-like structure navigation (all programmed in javascript)
  2. a new overall design with consistency and flow, because before the site was very unorganized and sloppy
  3. bookmarks, for increased user friendliness to navigation the site
  4. Flash based graphics and advertisements, this was huge because as you know I  love Flash

Here are some before and after pictures of the site, click on them to view a larger image (sorry some of them might be a little fuzzy but I had to resize them down to fit a 800 x 600 dimension).

BEFORE AFTER
frontofdpath frontofdpathnew
aboutdpath aboutdpathnew
productsdpath productsdpathnew
servicesdpath servicesdpathnew
resourcesdpath resourcesdpathnew
logindpath logindpathnew
sitemapdpath sitemapdpathnew
Here are a few before and after pictures of the navigation, click on them for a larger image.
navigationdpath navigationdpathnew

Cya

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Change of Status.com Website

August 19th, 2010

I have finished redesigning another website called changeofstatus.com. The purpose of the site is to help simplify and minimize the confusion involved in an employee’s change of status (sometimes called a “life event”) as it pertains to their various healthcare benefit plans. When someone gets married or looses a dependent, usually things like this are considered life events and allow the employee to change their benefit package accordingly, so they are not paying for something they do not need. Also on the change of Status website there is a tool that converts the complicated employee change of benefits status matrix to an easy-to-use, three-step wizard, allowing employees, employers and administrators to determine what life events are permitted under IRS rules and regulations. I redesigned the site completely, you can see the site images above. The image on the right is the ‘before’ image, and the image on the left is the ‘after’. I used this template before on other company websites and I thought I do the same for this site to keep the branding consistent overall.

The site uses the jQuery Cycle Plugin for the banner rotater so that its visible even on devices like phones that don’t run Flash. Also, the website is completely SEO friendly. This is another case where I put my SEO checklist to work and it has helped tremendously. Previously the site was around 500 hits a month. Now even after a couple weeks, it has raised to over 1,500 hits a month. I’ll post the google analytics pictures as soon as I can.

Cya

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WordPress and Flash 10x Cookbook Review

June 25th, 2010

As you may know, I have completed quite a few projects and written several posts regarding the integration of Flash and WordPress. In fact, my latest project was a complete Flash and WordPress Website called RocFolio 2.

A few weeks ago I was excited to be contacted by Packt Publishing. They asked me to review one of their books, “WordPress and Flash 10x Cookbook”. I was honored that they contacted me and excited for the opportunity to read through their book and see what I could learn. Here is the book information followed by my review.

Book Information

Full Title: WordPress and Flash 10x Cookbook
Author(s): Peter Spannagle, Sarah Soward
Pages: 268
Published: April 2010
Publisher: Packt Publishing
ISBN: 978-1-847198-82-2

My Review

The book as a whole is written well and includes over 50 simple and effective techniques on how to control certain tasks relating to Flash content in WordPress. The easy-to-follow step by step instructions, and pictures to help out those of us who are more visual, that accompany the techniques make integrating Flash and WordPress a fairly straightforward process.

This book is aimed at new or intermediate WordPress users who are interested in learning how to create the unique and media-rich sites that using plug-ins and Flash can provide, so much of the book’s content I was already fairly familiar with.  But for the newer user looking to enhance their personal or business sites and blogs, this book definitely contains strategies and techniques to help you do just that. Just remember that a working knowledge of XHTML, CSS, and graphic design is helpful and familiarity with WordPress is required, because the book does not address the basic mechanics of using WordPress itself. Also, any previous experience with Flash is helpful but not necessary.

Honestly, the Cookbook focused more on how to add, edit, and embed Flash into WordPress than an actual integration of the two, which is what I had originally thought it was going to be about. It also mentions several really nice WordPress plug-ins, some of which were strictly for helping you add and control Flash on your WordPress site, while others mentioned are to help you with SEO, Google Sitemaps, and optimizing your WordPress site as a whole. The Cookbook also delves into some Actionscript 3.0 scripting which is followed by examples paired with actual code. Here are links to some of the plug-ins the book mentions that I found to be particularly helpful tools in building a WordPress site:

Kimili Flash Embed Plugin
Dean’s FKCEditor  Plugin
Google Sitemaps XML Plugin
SEO Title Tags Plugin
FLV Embed Plugin

If you don’t know how to use these plug-ins, or have an overall desire to learn more about Flash content within WordPress, the WordPress and Flash 10x Cookbook definitely explains in detail the best way to do so. Overall, this book is a great reference and would be a helpful addition to your desk or workspace, especially if you’re a new or intermediate designer/developer. Hey, even if you’re an advanced user it could still come in handy, teaching you something you might have missed along the way as you taught yourself… we all have something to learn. Right?

Cya

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Housemadehome.net Website

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

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