Current Projects: Judge Karen Baker
I was contacted by Judge Karen Baker a short time ago. She’s planning her campaign for Arkansas Supreme Court. She was needing a website for her campaign so I provided her with a quote. Once I got the go ahead from her I got started. Naturally, content management is one of the projects requirements so I have started with wordpress 2.8 on the backend. I was also telling her during our talks that establishing a political figures page on Facebook and an account on Twitter for the campaign would go a long way toward giving her campaign some exposure so I have created those for her as well. The project isn’t complete yet, we are still waiting on some content but for the most part I have nailed down the design elements.
I have been using Brian Gardner’s studiopress themes for a while now as a starter them for the vast majority of my wordpress designs but about a month or so ago I decided to checkout woo themes after a few developers recommended them to me. This project is built upon a woo theme that I have modified. It’s coming along pretty well so far. I don’t have a launch date for the project to share at this time but here’s a screengrab of what we have so far…
New Project: Crawford for Congress
This has been a pretty busy week for me, I had 3 projects in my lap that are all basically starting from scratch. One of these projects is for Rick Crawford, who is running for Congress in 2010. I have been working with Jonah, Rick’s campaign manager, to put together a game plan for the project. We have arrived at wordpress 2.8 as the base cms and I have already started the process of designing the theme.
I have a rough theme in the works right now that is built upon one of the more dynamic woo themes, but I am lacking some photography and artwork to finalize the design so no sneak peak on this one right now. I should however be able to post an update this next week sometime, stay tuned…
Current Projects: ARALA Launched
I am meeting tomorrow with the Arkansas Residential Assisted Living Association to go over their new CMS for managing their website. As I mentioned the other day, ARALA has been a client for a long time and over the years we have went through a couple different content management solutions. I have no doubts that wordpress is going to be an excellent long-term solution for managing their website content.
Over the next few months I hope to bring all of the remaining clients that we have running cms solutions or frameworks that we hand coded ourselves over into wordpress or modx.
ARALA – Arkansas Residential Assisted Living Association |
Current Projects: OAHCP Redesign
This past week I mentioned that we were in the process of moving over two of our existing clients to wordpress. One of those clients was OAHCP, the Oklahoma Association of Health Care Providers. OAHCP has been one of my clients since 2002 and up until today were using a site that I had hand coded for them. Over the years I have learned a lot about how they use their website to communicate to their members and I realized that Wordpress was a perfect fit for them, you can preview this redesign at www.oahcp.org/cms, it should go live sometime today.
Current Projects: ARALA Redesign
ARALA, the Arkansas Residential Assisted Living Association has been a client of ours for several years, my notes go all the way back to 2002. Looking through my development notes today for this client I noticed that over the years we have incorporated several content management solutions for them to meet their needs. In 2003 they were using Frontpage to manage their content and in 2004 we added ContentSeed by Chris Leeds to simplify their day o day management of the website. According to my notes we upgraded their website about a year or so later to add some additional functionality for their members. It was during that process we also upgraded their CMS to Interspire’s WebEdit Professional.
One of the advantages to working with a client for a long period of time is that you become very familiar with how they use their website. Let’s face it, each client is different, on more than one occassion I have seen clients that had almost identical business models manage their web presence completely different from one another. It’s our job as developers to give our clients the best tools possible to make their life easier.
After speaking with ARALA last week we decided that it was time to go in and give their site a facelift. One of the things that I have been working on the past 2 days is bringing all of their content into Wordpress. I have a feeling they are going to love the flexibility and ease of use that Wordpress brings to the table.
I haven’t launched the project yet and it’s still pending client review, but here’s a screenshot of where we are so far…
Launched: Arkansas Blues & Heritage Fest
My partners and I recently launched the new website for the Arkansas Blues and Heritage Festival in Helena, Arkansas. Some of you might remember a short time ago I mentioned our involvement in this project. If you are a lover of the blues, please don’t hesitate to checkout the Arkansas Blues & Heritage Fest website, it’s being updated frequently with new information regarding the festival.
New Project: North Heights Youth
My partner Stephen recently handed me another ministry account, North Heights Youth, from Batesville, Arkansas. The client submitted a few designs and layouts they liked from other ministries he found online and we sort of took the project from there and produced a layout for the client to review.
We are currently in the client review aspect of the project and I should have more to report on this one very soon but for the time being, here’s a preview of the layout for those of you interested. Again, ministry website solutions have become sort of a interesting niche for me as of late and I am planning on rebranding Powersite in the very near future to go after the growing online ministry needs of churches across the US…
Project Update: Conway Faith Church
I have been working on a project recently for another ministry client here in Central Arkansas, The Conway Faith Assembly Church. I first met w/ Pastor Burden a few weeks ago over lunch and we began brainstorming for their project, which not only would include a new website but also a new face for their ministry. Ministry solutions has rapidly become one of my niche interests as of late so I have been pretty excited to work with another ministry client, especially one that is so close to home…
We are presently very close to launch with this project and I am very pleased with how the project has progressed so far. The new website is going to allow Conway Faith Church to post their messages online as well as video and staff blogs. I am hopeful that this will further expand their ministry. Here’s a sneak peak from our sandbox for those of you interested, I will post links once everything is officially launched: Conway Faith Church
New Project: Faith Church
I had the opportunity to meet with Pastor Burden at Conway Faith Church this past week and I think they are going to be our newest ministry client. His goal for the project was to bring some energy to their website that their existing website lacks. We will be assisting the staff at Conway Faith Church with a wide variety of things including podcasting and content management. I started the project this week on my sandbox server and it’s coming along well. Stay tuned for updates on this project, for the time being here’s a screenshot of the layout so far…
Current Projects: Arkansas Blues & Heritage Launched
This past week we have been running down the DNS and Domain Registration information for a new client, the Arkansas Blues & Heritage Festival in Helena, Arkansas. I am happy to announce that tonight we were finally able to get the nameservers pointed to our servers and the website launched. I am turning the login for the website over to the client tomorrow so that they can add some content to the site. To visit the website, click here (currently the site is populated with lorem ipsum, but check back soon for updated content regarding the festival)
In addition to developing the website, we have also created the following social network locations for the festival board:
- Twitter: HelenaBlues
- Facebook: Arkansas Blues & Heritage Festival
Arkansas Blues & Heritage Fest
