agaveweb.com

The original site was created in 2000. It served as a place to publish articles and hold information about a series of events on predictions for life in 20 years’ time.

While modern enough in Y2K, 8 years on it needed a rethink and also a way to make it editable by the owner rather than having to rely on the designer whenever anything needed changing.

WordPress to the rescue, once again.

Version 1: February 2007

This used the increasingly popular MIMBO template to show featured stories and articles in various categories. Clicking a “featured” box and uploading a thumbnail populated the front page’s stories. Drop down menu items removed clutter displaying all the pages in the side bar, and Google AdSense was added to monetize the whole enterprise. There are multiple ways to navigate: through the categories, tags, search, RSS and via the featured stories.

Though slick and clean, this design didn’t really stand out and we decided on going for some premium, royalty-free stock images from StockExpert and a change in the theme to Digital Pop.

Current Version

Now, rather than Mimbo’s built-in features, we’ve gone the plugin route to display most popular stories & featured articles along with the standard areas you’d expect in any WordPress site such as tagging, categories and a powerful search. There are also customizable forms for submitting articles and contact. All the articles have an “Email to a friend” link and the large amount of outbound links are getting this site noticed and daily there are more and more subscribers.

If you’re interested in what the future holds or just want to check out the latest agaveweb site click on over to The Next Twenty Years Series. I’ll be hassling the client for a testimonial soon…