Just finished another client Website. It runs Wordpress - which I mainly used for the ease of creating photo galleries. The blog functionality is not used at all. The Wedding is on April 18th of this year - and they’re mainly going to use the site for the RSVP function for their guest. I used the Contact Form Plugin by Takayuki Miyoshi and modified it a little bit. Below is a screenshot of their home page:

My client is a school district made up of several schools.  They want to bring the look of the district into one design and force the individual schools to use a template design.  The Apple logo for the Appleton Area School District will need to be on the upper left with the words “Appleton Area School District”

A screenshot of the existing homepage is shown below:

The problems I found with their existing website:

1. Too much blank space. This is due to the fluid layout the designer used for the pages. It is almost impossible to attain uniform looking webpages with fluid layouts due to the compromise in the screen resolution. Personally - I NEVER use fluid layouts.
2. Pages in the right hand menu do not contain enough information to fill an actual page. When you click on links such as “Mission Statement” or “From The Principal” - it takes you to a page with 3 or 4 sentences. Barely enough to fill a container - much less a page.
3. The template disappears as soon as you navigate to other pages - I guess this is why they need a redesign.

Below are screenshots of the inner pages:

As you can see - the pages went from one layout to another. Moreover, many of the information in the inner pages I feel should be presented in their homepage anyway. This should alleviate a lot of the blank space issue they have in their homepage, plus present valuable information right in their most important page - the homepage.

My design: I came up with a fixed layout - 960 pixels that stays in the middle of the page. White background all around, simplified fonts and no effects on pictures and other elements. I wanted to keep the website professional looking as well as modern.

1. A very simple template for the mother school district - which contain nothing more but their logo, search and their main navigation bar. This will house all the other school websites that will act as subsites.
2. All the bits and pieces of information that used to be in other pages - I’ve categorized appropriately in the home page. On the left hand side - a large photo of the school, followed by announcements. This includes the principal’s note and the general school announcements. The middle column are acts as an informative column - basically general information about the school that everyone should know about - this includes their a) mission statement, b) school history - in this case “Janet Lee Berry” and c) contact information. Finally, the right most column are ”calendars and events” stuff. This includes a calendar for their events, the schools’ daily schedule, and finally lunch and program schedules.

A screenshot of my design is shown below. You can view the actual size by clicking on the image. 

Once again, I’m keeping my fingers crossed. I have yet to win in 99designs.

Finally - I found one. The dude’s name is Kailoon. He runs a tutorial blog, Kailoon.com. Just like Small Potato - but with more graphic design artistry in my opinion. For Wordpress beginner designers - you HAVE to get a dose of his version of “How to create a wordpress theme from Scratch“. Like Small Potato’s version - but this theme actually has more graphics, features and style. In addition, The theme has a “feature post” section that separates regular posts from your feature post. This is something I’ve always wanted to learn how to do.  Maybe I haven’t searched Google hard enough - but I was never able to find a decent walkthrough on Featured Posts. Moreover, the theme “SuperFresh” has additional template files such as about.php, links.php and image.php. Image.php template is how the theme handles image galleries in your blog. Having said enough - my regards to Kailoon on his contribution to the Wordpress community. Believe me - I’ve written tutorials and THEY DO take a lot of time to make. Especially good ones.

Below are screenshots of index.php and image.php of SuperFresh Theme which is available for download in Themetation.

1. First is WeloveWP. WeLoveWP showcases only the best in WordPress powered websites. It is ran by Henry Jones, which is one of those what I call ”crazy” designers. I say crazy because he’s “crazy good” in design. His work has inspired me so much and you will notice a lot of my choice of style come from him. Below is a screenshot of my homepage in WeloveWP:



Henry Jones is also the person behind the very well known: DesignReviver - which I’m a very proud subsciber to. If you haven’t come across DesignReviver.com - it’s a website for designers that has a bounty of information and tips. It’s where I get half of my resources ranging from backgrounds, brushes, CSS techniques, best practices and so forth. Henry Jones also has his personal site where you will see similarities in his style and technique between all 3 of his websites. Thank you Henry Jones.

2. Second is Screenalcious.  Screenalicious is a source for designers for inspiration. What they do is compile screenshots of websites into one spot so that all designers need to do is subscribe to them and they can get their inspiration through their feeds. They have a large collection of excellent websites that grow daily.  Below is a screenshot of their front page with my thumbnail as a featured website:



3. Third is MostInspired.com. Similar to WeLoveWp and Screenalicious - where they feature websites for designer’s to look at and get inspired. But that’s not all they do. Mostinspired.com has a very active blog section with posts you have to check out such as: Websties of the Most Powerful Celebrities, their Weekly Top Standards and Web Development News and resources. Below is their screenshot:


 

What’s next from here? This has led me to do two things: be a more active blogger and another redesign. Yes that’s right a redesign. For anybody who’s been following my blog - I just created this theme just about days ago as discussed in my previous post. The problem with this theme is it was intended for the more “inactive” bloggers - hence, the mostly static front page. Nevertheless, I’m very excited and look forward to getting in the design community. Once again, thank you to the sites that featured me.