agaveweb.com

Logo and Brochure Web Site for a Healthy Snack Vending Machine Company

Gwyn — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 23:15:09 +0000

Enlightened vending (here’s their new site) needed a site fast to promote their company that specializes in tasty, healthy snacks. They wanted a site that “POPPED” and a sunny logo that would express warmth and charity since a percentage of the profits from their nutritious snacks goes to good causes.

WordPress is once again the CMS of choice to allow for easy edits and fast search engine indexing. Rather than starting a theme from scratch to save time and money they went for a modified Blixed theme.

They already had hosting and a domain name so they passed me the details and I went ahead and installed the latest version of WordPress, a template and configured several key plug-ins (including a Contact Form script, Akismet anti-spam, & google XML site map creator). Then I went about modifying the colors and other elements.

I also created the graphic elements such as the vending machine “buttons” which should be there until they have their own images to upload. The turnaround for the entire site was just three days. If you want a quality website and need it fast, get in touch and let’s make it happen!

Tequila Seminar 2007 CD Cover

Gwyn — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 17:56:05 +0000

SIT 2007 is using a photo of mine from Tequila for their CD-ROM cover. It’s available at all good Mexican Academic Libraries

Here’s the original.

Wordpress CMS vs. Static Pages

Gwyn — Thu, 01 May 2008 04:02:27 +0000

There are many reasons why a WordPress site is better for you than a traditional static site. The main ones being:

You don’t have to call up your web person every time you want to make edits to the content
Super easy to upload photos, videos, music, documents, etc…
It’s optimized for search engines from the get go.
Add and remove pages easily from the admin panel and the links take care of themselves
Ready-to-go communication system via comments and RSS
Thousands of plug-ins to enhance the site’s functionality

Although WordPress is well known as a blogging platform, you don’t have to include a blog section in your site, it can be purely undated pages. Virtual Impax just published an informative and informal little post about whether a blog is a good idea for your business too.

www.theothercafe.com

Another WordPress site adapted by www.agaveweb.com view on flickr»" rel="lightbox">

I just made a small site with relatively few pages based on a free template. It’s for The Other Café- a SF comedy club’s page for an upcoming reunion. It features a gallery, submission forms and a fair few custom graphics. As articles are submitted it will grow and is now ranked #1 on Google after a few short weeks for the search terms: (The) Other Cafe, a testiment to WordPress’s impressive in-built SEO.

I need a website, what’s next?

Gwyn — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 15:09:09 +0000

I just read an excellent article that explains what the various options are for your website and also has good definitions of terms like CMS, Platform and pros and cons of various approaches.

Click on over there, then come back and if you have any questions.

Photography Portfolio Wordpress Site

Gwyn — Sat, 19 Apr 2008 21:08:52 +0000

As you’ve probably gathered I’m very much into photography. I upload most of my photos to Flickr, but I wanted a site to showcase my favourites. Presenting www.agaveweb.com/photos !

www.agaveweb.com/photos view on flickr»" rel="lightbox">

It uses a theme called Monochrome Gallery and uses custom fields to display the photos and thumbnails. Notable features for this site included:

Making the RSS feed include those custom fields.
The E-card section where I adapted a send-to-a-friend plugin to fit a photoblog.
Minor tweaks here and there to the layout.

Overall, it’s a great theme which didn’t require much in the way of adaptation and I LOVE the javascript image gallery on the front page. There are also pro (paid for) versions of the theme which have lots more configuration possibilities through the admin panel.

Check it out and leave a comment if you either there or here if you want to know more about the ins and outs of photoblogging.

Banner ads don’t have to be annoying

Gwyn — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 17:31:33 +0000

Here are some I designed for a nifty little gadget - a powerful LED flashlight that recharges in your car’s cigarette lighter… If you’re interested in buying a lighter, try lighterlight.com. If you’d like me to design some web ad banners for you in a range of sizes, call me or shoot me an email!

Futurist Web Site

Gwyn — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 17:29:42 +0000

My latest site has involved working very closely with the site’s executive producer who has very clear ideas on visuals and organization. Here’s a screen grab of how it USED to look on the right.

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…

Blue Fin- Logo Design

Gwyn — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 17:31:45 +0000

Blue Fin is a new media company that hopes to expand into lots of different areas. They chose the middle logo above out of the options I designed. Logo packages start at $99 depending on the number of revisions and complexity. Get in touch for a free consultation.

Tequila Shots II

Gwyn — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 17:34:05 +0000

This time for a less academic reason… I was contacted by someone who had seen my pictures of Tequila, Mexico with a view to using them on their site. As development on the site progressed, they needed someone local to take high resolution pictures of the bottles on a white background for use on the site and in marketing materials and large tracts of text translated from Spanish to English. Happily, I’m a one-stop shop for web design, photography and translation.

On their new site they’re using many of my pictures, however it’s NOT my design. I advocate against the use of Flash intros and would not have included autoplaying “traditional” music on each page… However, overall it’s a quality product. Both the site and their tequila. Just be sure to lower your speakers’ volume before visiting… Update: 3/14/08: Looks like the site is having issues with the Flash menu…

Photography: Documenting Mexican Traditions

Gwyn — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 17:32:40 +0000

My photos are free to use for non-commercial purposes. However, if you are interested in commercial use get in touch and make an offer. A series of photos I took of the peanut harvest in Jalisco, Mexico is going to be used in an upcoming book on Mexican Geography published and sold in Mexico.

You can search the tags on my almost 10,000 Flickr photos here. The vast majority of the pictures were taken in Mexico.