www.reflectingthedesigner.com

As I was working on redesigning theStock411 WordPress blog, I implemented two fantastic WordPress plugins. One of these plugins is WP-Sticky. I’ve known about this plugin for a while, but had never used it. It’s a nice simple way to keep one post at the top of your blog at all times. Now, there are a couple of items to note if you are using this plugin after creating your theme in Artisteer: You must change a tiny bit of php if you want to hide the date. I found a couple of forums that had parts of the following information:

Read the rest of this entry »

Well, I’ve been very busy on some projects recently as well as other “life” stuff that have kept me from being able to post as much as I’d like to. I just completed a full WordPress website for a company that I did a WP blog for several months ago. They wanted their whole site transformed and consolidated into one WordPress Site. It was a huge process as I had to set up WordPress in their current hosting location, transfer the old blog over to it, and completely design and add content to their site from top to bottom.

Read the rest of this entry »

Well, as you can see if you’ve visited my site before, I’ve just updated the theme again. I like to create new design themes for my own site both for variety as well as to demonstrate some nice Artisteer, Photoshop, and WP tweaking techniques. I’ll list a few of those techniques in this post.

Read the rest of this entry »

So, as I was updating my QuickTime player today, I went ahead and installed the Safari web browser to my computer. (That’s what I’m using right now as I type this post, actually.) This is a super fast browser! It is way faster than IE which takes forever to load, and has so many little bugs, and it’s even faster than Firefox which is my default browser currently. I will probably keep Firefox as my default simply because I have Last Pass (my password management tool) installed which only works with Firefox.

I’ve just started using Safari, so still checking it out. I love the “Top Sites’ feature. It automatically keeps a record of the top sites you visit, or you can bookmark sites and add them. They are all displayed on the screen in a cool way so you can quickly click on the one you want.

The tools are easy to navigate and understand, as well, and the over all look is very appealing. It’s not a clunky looking site, and it just “makes sense.” You can open up a new tab or window by clicking the cute little page icon in the top right corner, and the gear icon has all of your settings. The simplicity of design and ease of use, is really nice. I LOVE the speed, and will keep you posted on other features I discover. I might just have to find a password manager for Safari instead, because I think I might be hooked!

I purchased Artisteer back in the spring, and it has more than made up the money I invested into it by the ease at which it allows you to create templates for WordPress, Blogger, Dot Net Nuke, Joomla, and Drupal. I use it all the time, and actually just used it again to give this site a little refresher. The beauty about Artisteer is that it allows you to implement your own designs into the template completely so that the design is all yours from the background images, textures, and glare all the way down to the individual icons. Now, while Artisteer is a great tool, I wouldn’t be able to accomplish an original and customized look without the use of design software like Photoshop. This post will explain just a few of the steps in creating a great, customized look using both of these tools.

The Background

You’ll notice that I have a great bead board background as well as a semitransparent sheet with a shadow and a yellow sidebar column with a pattern in it and shadow as well. You’ll also note that using Artisteer alone, it is impossible to get one sidebar background to look different from the other, and it is also impossible to get a drop shadow around the main sheet alone and not the header. In order to accomplish this, I needed to create a vertically tiled background that accomplished all of this for me. The first thing I did was to search online for bead board image. When I found the the style I wanted, I pulled it into Photoshop, and selected only about 1 pixel tall and as wide as the image was and Defined it as new a Pattern.

I then created a box and using the fx toolbar created a Pattern Overlay using my newly created bead board pattern. I could than re size that image however I wanted without losing my pattern. I used that layer as my background, then created the other elements on top of it. I created grid lines for my header height and sheet width, than created my semi transparent sheet with a shadow and my yellow column with a pattern overlay. (Hint: for the pattern in the column, I just copied and pasted the screen shot of Artisteer using one of their textures, than I created my own pattern out of it in Photoshop).

When my basic background was completed with the beaded background, the sheet, and the column, I again cropped the image in such a way that it would repeat seamlessly when stacked vertically. I went to Insert Image or Texture from file, centered it, and chose repeat vertically to complete the background. I then made sure that my sheet and footer in Artisteer were transparent so that my background “sheet” and “column” would show through as if they were the main sheet and side bars.

Using Glare

Now, even though I could make a header image using that same bead board pattern for the background, I still had a shadow on either side of the header because of my main background image I created. The easiest way to fix that, is to create a custom glare to cover up that shadow! The ribbon, and small squares of the bead board on either side of the header served as my glare and helped give the appearance that header blends in seamlessly to the background. Also, note that I chose a transparent background for the menu bar so that it looks like my ribbon is the menu bar. (Hint: You’ll need to make sure that you create a png for your glare, and that you size it to fit exactly to correct width and height of your header. Also, make sure to center it on your sheet in Aristeer. This can be a time consuming process to get it exact, but it is well worth it.)

I hope that this was helpful. Please leave a comment if you enjoyed this post, or if you have any questions or suggestions on creative ways of using Artisteer. Please email me if you are interested in an original and completely customized WordPress or Blogger Theme design.

Based on a comment I received earlier today, I thought I should do this post. Many people think that WordPress can only be used for blogs, or that you need to know some complicated code in order to turn your current WP blog into a full site. Both of these statements couldn’t be further from the truth. This site is a perfect example of that, and here are a few simple things you can do to turn your WP blog into a full blown site.

• Create a static home page - This is so simple! Just create a page that you want to be your home page and publish it. - Next, create a blog that you want your regular posts to be located on and publish that page as well. - Thirdly, on click on the Reading button under Settings on your Dashboard and choose to make your home display a static page. Just choose the page you created for the static page and choose the page you created to display posts for well…your posts.
• Label your blog something other than “blog” if you don’t necessarily want a typical blog as part of your site. Here are a few examples. - Resources or Products: if you offer services or items that you want to display based on category. You can create a page for each category as well, and your main Resources or Products page will display all of your posts. - News: use more like a blog to display your latest news. You can always choose to display only 1 or a few posts at a time, as well so that only the newest post is displayed like a regular page. - A specific theme. If you only update information on a very specific topic, than label your blog posts page that: movies, music, photos, etc.
• Use the text widget to create a graphic image or images on one or both sidebars. All you need to do is upload the desired image to your site, than copy and paste some code into the text widget. Let me know if you have any questions on this.
• Use the Display Widgets plugin from WP which allows you to hide and show widgets on only certain pages (note that this only works with the standard widgets as well as any text/image widgets you add).
• Make links from your pages with the Page Links To plugin from WP. This does just what it says; it allows you to create a page and link it to any address desired. For example, if you want to make a page out of specific categories, simply click on that category and copy and paste the url into the page link you want that page name to be.
• Other simple ideas include removing the words “Archive” from when displaying pages that are archives of posts, including a graphic signature to your home page. You can find out how to do these in previous posts of mine.
• Add a small store through your PayPal account by adding buy now or add to cart buttons by products you post to your site. All transactions are done through PayPal which is super easy and convenient for you. The buttons can be created completely through PayPal and you’ll get the exact code to copy and paste onto your pages. You can also use the E-Commerce plugin, but I’d recommend using this only if you have a more extensive store as it takes more work to set up and takes more space up on your site.

There are a ton of other things you can do, but those are the quickest and easiest ways to turn your blog into a site! Please let me know if this was helpful or if you have any more questions on turning your WordPress Blog into a regular website. also, contact me if you are interested in a completely original and customized WordPress theme design with setup.

//

As you can tell if you’ve been following me, I’ve just updated my site. I love the convenience of having all of my main site elements on WordPress, so I created a new theme design that has the look and feel of a regular website and through together a quick landing page in Sitegrinder. I love both of these programs, and am looking forward to improvements on both. WordPress gives me an easy to use and customize CMS platform and Sitegrinder gives me the ability to quickly put out beautiful web pages or sites exactly how they were created in Photoshop. You might notice some more changes to the landing page over the next week. I put something simple out, because I just wanted to get something up that matched the design of my main site content, I’ll probably be making some changes in the near future to the landing page. However, I think it’s a good start and it gives me the refresh that I needed to tie my site together.

Note, if you managed to find your way here from the SiteGrinder test pages, please know that I did not change design due to any issues with SiteGrinder. I’m still a very contented Site Grinder user and am looking forward to future improvements, but have been recently learning the ins-and-outs to mastering WordPress for a complete CMS ready website.

I hope you enjoy the new look, and please feel free to leave feedback or contact me if you are interested in any design work for yourself.

I found this site just today and downloaded one of their free icon sets. These are some very clean and professional looking icons that I’m going to start implementing. They have tons of icons that you can pay for, but the free ones are definitely must haves if you don’t want to take the time to always create your own generic ones. You should check them out.

This is a blog I designed and have been managing. The owner of the blog is very experienced as a teacher and story teller, but she has almost no experience with computers. She can add to, edit, and categorize her posts, but that’s about it. All of the design work, images, the plug-ins, the set ups, and the ads were done by me.

This blog was designed to showcase animals stories she has written for children, puppets she uses when telling stories, and fun facts about animals. These stories are also being recorded and available on podcast. That has been a new and fun experience for me to work with Audacity in order to put together music, sound effects, and the monologue for each story. If you have pre-school or elementary aged children, I would definitely recommend checking it out. I think they will enjoy these cute animal stories. If you do check it out, make sure to stay posted as more stories will continue to be added and recorded. Eventually, downladable coloring pages will also be available.

In designing this theme, I used real photos and edited them in Photoshop to give them the feel of a painting. These were very quick designs, and I plan on doing further edits on the images within posts, and of course, I’ll be adding more pics to some of the newer chapters which will be posted.

So, check out the Adventures of Sammy the Skunk!

We’ve used Vista Print quite a bit at Kids 4 Truth because they are pretty fast and inexpensive. I’ve even used them personally. They are especially great for greeting cards, announcements, business cards, etc. because their prices can’t be beat and you can upload your own designs.

The only draw back is that you have to ignore their pushy salesmanship. They’ll try to get to you add all sorts of things to your order, but just keep hitting continue and ignore it and you’ll be fine.

Here are some greeting cards I designed and had printed through Vista Print.

Kids4Truth Christmas Card 07

Kids4Truth Christmas Card 08