Saturday, May 23, 2009

It's Pouring Projects - The Latest from Katie James Pixelated

We've been busy here! Three projects wrapped up this week for the Katie James Pixelated team:

Alisa Benay's Blog, Couture Corset Wedding Gown Designer

Alisa Benay Blog Redesign

Alisa couture line of corset wedding gowns is quickly growing in popularity, and she needed her blog to keep the pace and reflect well of the brand.
DESIGN: We worked with the existing look of Alisa's website and using elements from her logo to drive this design.
TECH: We built this on the WordPress platform, as Alisa wanted to have important static pages and be able to stand on its own as a website, not just a blog.
WHO'S MANAGING: Alisa has the keys and is driving this baby. She is able to train her staff on making updates to the blog posts and the the static pages, as well as to both side columns.
www.alisabenay.com/blog

The Purcell Sisters

Purcell Sisters Website Redesign
The Purcell Sisters, if you haven't met them, are some of the funniest, well manicured southern belles living in Manhattan. They wrote a book, Cocktail Parties Straight Up! to help everyone throw an amazing party, and have brought their delicious recipes to the Internet.
DESIGN: Their original website was designed in images - every last word of it. So maintenance -wise, making changes was A. not in their control, B. more expensive, and C. could take a while. We based this design off of elements that they liked from their old website, with a little more flair.
CHALLENGES: Recipes are quite popular, and there were a lot of them. We discussed ways to categorize them, and retain natural SEO opportunities in the menus and page titles, leaving the copywriting to the Sisters when they wanted to optimize certain pages. The menus are also built to keep you on the recipe you are looking at, so that you can browse the recipes in the menus without constantly changing pages.
TECH: This website was built on the Drupal platform.
WHO'S MANAGING: The Purcell Sisters, of course! We sent them directions on how to create a new recipe and to edit non-recipe pages. We built the recipe pages as a special template, so that all the Sisters had to worry about was having an image, typing in the title, blurb at the top, ingredients, recipe, and the make-ahead-factor.
Warning: If you go to this website, you will leave hungry. Very hungry.
www.purcellsisters.com


Gemma Redux :: Press, Lookbook and Announcement Box

Press page: (updates like adding products)
Gemma Redux Press Page Redesign

Announcement Box: (can be turned on or off in seconds)
Gemma Redux Announcement Page Design

Rachel Dooley, designer and founder of Gemma Redux, is on fire. She is getting press from major outlets, and her fans are loving it.
GOAL: To quickly feature new press, and make it easy to buy the featured jewelry right away.
DESIGN: We designed these new components to work with the existing design - clean and contemporary.
CHALLENGES: This website shopping cart design is quite unique, and we had to crack open a few elements of the content management system to make it all work smoothly.
TECH: It's on the ZenCart platform. Bet you wouldn't have guessed that, right?
WHO'S MANAGING: We both are. Depending on how busy it is at Gemma Redux, we may jump in to lend a hand. But, all components were built to be user friendly for their team.

For more information on other websites, see www.katie-james.com/classes

2 comments:

WI said...

hi there - very cool blog with some handy tips on DIY-ing your blog. thanks! :)

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