VIVidWeb Services

Sheryl Sarkoezy Photography

Viv — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 05:09:42 +0000

Sheryl has been a keen (and prize-winning) photographer for many years, and an active member of the online Flickr photography service for years as well. While she wanted a showcase gallery website, she didn’t want to abandon her much loved Flickr archives and community, but she didn’t want to have to upload everything twice, either. So, this site gives her the best of both worlds by pulling images from her Flickr photo archive to display them in more personalised surroundings.

As well as the extensive custom gallery options, Sheryl now has a blog function to write in more detail about her creative process.

Monochrome Lite Reloaded

Viv — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 01:45:09 +0000

This is a placeholder post: the reworked theme is currently a work in progress. I’ve rewritten nearly every file in the original GraphPaperPress Monochrome Lite template to provide a custom template for a client who needs extra CMS functionality built into each page of their multi-author site.

When the client site goes live, this post will be rewritten to include more details as it is added to the portfolio section.

Feministe

Viv — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 23:30:35 +0000

Feministe is a well established political/social commentary blog, which was having problems with running very slowly and being difficult for readers to access and join the discussions.

A full overhaul of the database plus implementation of various plugins to enhance site security and loading speed were necessary, plus a theme redesign to one that was fast to load and optimised for search engines, yet which kept the familiar look for the blog’s readers so that they were not overwhelmed by too many changes all at once.

The premium customising features of the Thesis theme framework were the key here. This allowed a rapid redesign of the blog, retaining the familiar colours and graphics while simplifying the presentation of information on the site.

Julia Clark, Comedian

Viv — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 01:08:13 +0000

Julia is building a busy career and needed a showcase site that had all the information needed by promoters as well as introducing her to new audiences. Julia can also add new content to the blog section easily or update any of the other pages as required.

sliding panels on the front page to display teasers for more detailed content on other pages of the site
links to downloadable high-resolution publicity photos and a downloadable zip-file of a media/promo kit
gigs calendar run from a web-calendar application that can be accessed easily on the road or at an internet cafe

The template used is a customised version of a Woothemes template, adding a few graphic elements to soften a crisp template with a few elegantly playful touches.

VIVidWeb Hosting

Viv — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 00:34:14 +0000

A new endeavour for VIVidWeb, targeting several niche markets and emphasising accessibility for disabled web users. The template used is therefore minimalist and emphasising text rather than flashy graphics.

This is another customisation of the highly flexible Thesis theme for WordPress, a template built with accessibility and SEO in mind.

Sack Kyle and Jackie O

Viv — Sun, 02 Aug 2009 00:39:46 +0000

The theme is designed to highlight a call to action on the part of the reader (in this instance sending a letter of complaint).

This is a special-purpose site that needed to be up and running quickly in order to catch the current news cycle. Using a very lightly modified template from WooThemes, the site was live less than 24 hours after the relevant scandal broke.

The front page highlights the key message in one full width summary section and a special tab in the navigation is contrasted to draw attention to the call to action. Any campaign, commercial or community-based, benefits from having a strong, clear message on the front page with easy links to further information as one reads through the site.

The advantage of using a commercially available theme pretty much out-of-the-box is that it makes it possible to have a site up and running within hours. With more time available, such sites can be designed with unique campaign branding that highlights the call to action even more strongly.

Gill Stannard, Naturopath & Herbalist

Viv — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 12:40:03 +0000

Gill wanted a professional presence online to promote not only her therapeutic services in Melbourne but also her public speaking and media skills. She also had very particular ideas of what she liked and didn’t like design-wise, which meant incorporating elements from a few select favourite sites into the final design, plus her own photographs of herbs and fresh foods, which was an interesting challenge made much easier than it otherwise would be by the flexibility of the Thesis template for WordPress.

Having been an avid blogger on health and wellbeing for many years, Gill also wanted to incorporate her existing blog posts as news articles on the new site. As they were archived at blogspot.com, this involved importing them and applying a new category and tag hierarchy for indexing and navigation purposes. A batch processing tool made this a simpler process than manually editing all those posts would have been. The site design also needed to have a strong separation between the professional services section and the blog articles section, achieved by the separation of certain types of content by coloured block backgrounds.

The end result is a highly individualised website for Gill, offering her a unique profile on the Web.

Hoyden About Town redux

Viv — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 12:17:48 +0000

With the release of WordPress version 2.8+ and a new release of the Thesis template to go with it, it was time to update the blog again to play with some new elements while still keeping some of the site’s recognised visual highlights [see earlier design]. The Thesis theme has built in SEO functionality as well as great consideration paid to accessibility web standards.

The number of plugins has been culled, preferring now to use Thesis hooks to call functions previously called by plugins, and the site’s layout is cleaner.

The Thesis multimedia box functions have been great fun, showing rotating images on most pages with occasional custom code inserts on specific pages, such as this one which displays random photos from the Hoydenizen community Flick group’s image pool.

David Nettle, Civil Celebrant

Viv — Sat, 30 May 2009 07:56:55 +0000

David needed a personal profile website that also promoted the services he can provide as a Certified Marriage Celebrant in and around Sydney (not just weddings!). This is the December 2009 update of the original design to a more sophisticated look.

It remains a very simple look for the site (to make it stand out against the competitors covered in pastel tones) but now uses flowers as a subtle background image in order to have a more direct wedding celebration theme. The content includes many varied photographs to provide colour and variety as readers look around the content. Beneath the simplicity sophisticated drop-down menus and a powerful CMS organise the fairly substantial content that details options, ideas and legal obligations.

Wicked Women Comedy

Viv — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 18:08:10 +0000

The Wicked Women team wanted a site with dramatic visual impact and enabled for social networking. This required substantial extension and customisation of the basic WordPress installation.

Because they had some excellent photos I chose a sliding-doors effect for the navigation menu to display these images front and centre. They also wanted to show off their logo in a large size on a splash page, with a sparkly animation, which involved close liaison with the artwork suppliers as well as generating customised code to ensure that the splash page was within the WordPress installation.

The addition of a slick gallery to showcase their events and customised content classes to make updating their website simple for non-coders were the other major factors for this site.