Wilmington Delaware Website Design | Web App Development » Web Design

Jewelry Making Professor – Web Design

jesse — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 21:26:47 +0000

The second project of the Jewelry Making Professor website was no less challenging than the first. While the first project dealt with the underlying structure and applications that power the website, this project dealt with the design and user interface.

The assignment was to create a design that could work with all of the areas of the Jewelry Making Professor website. This included an eCommerce section, a blog, and several call to action pages. Included within was the Video of the Week and a count down timer that display on the home page.

After refining the design, we settled no a basic layout. This design was then turned into a WordPress theme and an X-cart theme. Both needed to align perfectly and create the appearance of one continuous website. Take a look for yourself, check out the — X-cart portion and the Blog area here.

The Game Within

jesse — Sun, 17 Apr 2011 01:28:52 +0000

The Game Within website was a fun project to work on. We’ve done previous work for Christo Schutte, owner of The Game Within.

Our piece of the puzzle was solely website design and web development. There were also certain elements of graphic design that were required of us, but the design and concept was done by Rodd at Cause Design.

This project was a rapidly paced project which moved quickly. We met with Rodd and he supplied us with the entire design and concept in Photoshop. We then translated this design into a web based format. Geoff from Geoff Matheson Design helped with CSS and graphic work. His work was invaluable in getting the design tweaked just right.

For this project we used WordPress as our CMS. WordPress is a superior user friendly CMS and is designed for SEO and other internet web standards.

For all of our websites that use WordPress, we design the WordPress theme from the ground up. Our theme is loosely based on the best parts of the current recommended 2010 design. We start with a stripped down 2010 theme + some of our own default goodies. A customized theme and layout is then created from this default. This is where we then build our CSS and XHTML code. Since we have such an in depth knowledge of WordPress, we can use built in WordPress functions at times, and then either use our own custom written PHP functions or create our own. The combination allows us to create anything and everything possible, while giving the site owner complete control over their site.

Other features of this website are:
1. A JQuery Cycle based home page splash. JQuery Cycle is very cool because it allows you to use JavaScript with regular XHTML & CSS. It is incredibly flexible and really easy to use.

2. Lots of WordPress Post customization. We use WordPress Posts as custom taxonomies which power pieces of the site, like the Testimonials. The site owner can then add and edit these Posts and all of the information will appear in the correct sections of the website.

3. Recent Blog posts on the home page use PHPThumb to display thumbnails of larger images. PHPThumb is one of the coolest scripts we’ve found in awhile. It allows runtime thumbnails to be created & their file size adjusted proportionately. This means that the site owner can upload any image & our script can crop this image however we tell it to. Super Cool!!

4. TypeKit fonts used for the website’s font.

5. Social Media Optimization and collaboration. Each of the Blog posts on the website have their subject and URL automatically posted on The Game Within’s Twitter feed. Once the tweet is done, it is automatically posted on The Game Within FaceBook page and then finally automatically posted on Christo’s Linked In page.

So check out the website today!

Tile McGee

jesse — Fri, 10 Dec 2010 19:34:39 +0000

Tile McGee is a startup tile development company. EJHost and Geoff Matheson Studio worked together on this project. We were hired to create a brand / identity and a website for Tile McGee. This project included the creation of a logo, business cards, envelopes, stationary, website, and SEO. Features of the website are a custom CMS to control all of the site’s content and eCommerce to sell tiles through the website. The website was built on the Content Management System, WordPress so the owner could manage all of the content while using a prepackaged piece of software to keep the client’s costs down. The tilemcgee.com project was completed in February of 2010

Baiada Photography

jesse — Fri, 10 Dec 2010 19:18:26 +0000

Baiada Photography specializes in wedding photography. EJ Host was contracted to update their website, increase their site’s visibility, and list Baiada Photography on the first page of Philadelphia Wedding Photographers in Google. We developed their wedding photography site using Flash, Slide Show Pro, PHP, html, to create a custom Content Management System. JavaScript and html needed to be written correctly to properly optimize the website for Google indexation. All content, including albums, can be edited and updated through an administrative interface. Baiada Photography can now post their most recent weddings and display their most recent photography. Additionally a blog was created using WordPress. EJ Host and Geoff Matheson Studio designed a matching theme to give both the blog and wedding site a contiguous look and feel. The site was completed in March 2010

Atonement Church

jesse — Fri, 10 Dec 2010 18:47:40 +0000

United Methodist Church of the Atonement is located in Claymont Delaware. UMC of the Atonement hired us to completely design a new website for them. After extensive research and analysis of the client’s needs and goals we proposed and created a project plan. Interactivity and Web 2.0 functionality was a top priority. The goal of the site was to create an online interactive social community based website where visitors could go and interact.

EJ Host and Geoff Matheson Studio teamed up to produce an alluring design teamed with incredible depth and breadth of content. We developed the site using a WordPress platform, custom WordPress theme, many WordPress plugins, custom applications, scripts, database tables and SQL queries.

Here is a link to the Atonement Church website

Play Therapy Delaware

jesse — Thu, 09 Dec 2010 21:00:25 +0000

Play Therapy Delaware was recently relaunched with its new brand and look of the website. Carol Bouzoukis contacted EJHost regarding increasing both the traffic to her website and her number of clients. Her old website needed a complete makeover + it needed to be optimized for Search Engine Optimization. The project included creation of a new logotype for her site, minor updates to copy writing, proper html and image tagging, increasing the depth of her content, addition of a blog, and keyword targeting for SEO optimization. The budget for this project was under $1,000, so most of the development time was spent on design, properly tagging her site and html optimization. WordPress was used as the CMS and a custom theme was designed. After the completion of the project, Play Therapy Delaware is now positioned for an advertising / marketing campaign with Google AdWords or another PPC program.

Geoff Matheson Design took care of the graphic design for this WordPress site, EJHost did all of the keyword research. proper tagging, and other elements of SEO for the site.

SEO – Designing the perfectly optimized webpage

admin — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 22:45:20 +0000

SEOmoz - The #1 rated SEO site in Google

While on the hunt to become the best Search Engine Optimization & Website Design and Development specialist possible, I came across this article on SEOmoz about “building the perfect page”. Of course since this article is on SEOmoz, it has to do with SEO and keyword targeting. This is a fairly advanced article, but even SEO novices may enjoy reading it for tips to point them in the right website design direction.

SEO stuff: Writing effective Alternative Text ‘Alt Text’

admin — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 03:50:13 +0000

For Search Engine optimization and good website standards, the Alt property in an image needs to be properly tagged. How can a website designer or developer best /most effectively write Alternative text for images. The following link is an in depth article outlining the appropriate use of Alt Text. Web designers, developers, SEO folks, enjoy!!

http://webaim.org/techniques/alttext/