While we find working within our own control panels and setups much more fun, we are able to come into situations that are already further along.

Author David Bishop contacted us through our friends at Telemachus Press. He already had a WordPress site up, but his site had a problem with missing content. We fixed that up pretty quickly, much to David’s relief.

Next order of business was to make some changes to the site theme to help brand it better. This was acomplished  by modifying the header and adding more images of his books, as well as some extra page content.

The site header was edited so that each individual thumbnail would link to the detail page about that book.

Another part of the process involved communicating some difficult concepts related to the web!

For an author site, it’s important to have prominent & and easy methods for your visitors to see what you have published and also a way for them to download the ebook or order the paper edition.

We consulted with David about how to best use the tools available in his Dashboard, such as Post Tags and Search Engine Optimization tools.

We consulted with David about how to best maximize his Facebook page connection.

We consulted with David on how to market his signed copies directly from his site with PayPal as a payment processor.

We added David’s book thumbnails to his mail signature.

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We added in the logo, which was created by a 3rd party provider, and adapted the site colors and sprite rollover navigation to create a simple, but spirited, design.

Because the new site has a backend Dashboard, the site owner can login and change text and image content on site pages and a few other areas of the site. These additional content areas are strategically placed in several unique positions, as there is no conventional sidebar area.

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First and most important, a blog allows the owner to easily make posts and visitors to leave comments on these posts (after they are approved for display).

Google loves posts and comments about important issues, such as the “Peace & Politics” activities Liza is involved in.

With the non-blog system, these comments and contacts from people from all over the world were coming in via email. Now they can automatically become an important part of the site content.

The WordPress system is well-known for its friendly user interface, while still supporting a growing number of Plug-ins that are helping to move it beyond being just a ‘blog’.

The neatest feature of the old site has been retained – the cartoon interface and the dancing rollover figures!

We have recently added a widget that lets visitors easily share items on the site to their Facebook and Twitter walls.

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Dangerousroads.org was a place where visitors could read about, and users can enter, stories about dangerous roads in the United States.

The site was powered by WikyBlog a hybrid web application described as “not exactly a wiki, not exactly a blog.” by its developer,  Josh Schmidt.

When researching solutions for this project I was immediately impressed by WikyBlogs’  Google Maps integration features as used on the gaboons.com website.

On gaboons.com, users are able to add ‘posts’ about road race events and also edit and incorporate a Google Map associated with the event.

For dangerousroads.org,  Josh made this integration a little easier for the average visitor by making the live Google map automatically created by the event address entered by the user. The event map then magically appears on the same page as the users post about their dangerous road. Fabulous!

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Some features of the site include:

The film soundtrack is available in full stereo throughout the visit experience.

Uses  a frameset which allows the music flash player to play across all site pages.

Variable width pages built on original Photoshop art by designer  Samantha Stier.

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This site is another example of how the power & simplicity of a content management system (in this case, WordPress) can benefit the small business owner.

For the site template, we used a modified version of the default WordPress theme, adding the Holland hospitality logo, which is echoed in the navigation bar below.

The Gallery system on this site helps visitors to instantly get a good sense of the quality & depth of product lines carried by this company.

Big “Hi” to Clark Holland!

Print line card design.

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They can check a live listing of available properties, while having information about Berkshire Hearth Realty services at their fingertips. Marguerite is an Exclusive Buyer Broker® located in the heart of Great Barrington.

She lives and breathes whats happening in real estate in Berkshire county of Massachusetts!

If you are a buyer looking for a home or land in the towns of  Alford, Egremont, Great Barrington, Lee, Lenox, Monterey, New Marlborough, Sheffield, Stockbridge and West Stockbridge  as well as Becket, Otis, and many other towns  and cities in our lovely Berkshire Hills of western Massachusetts, she is ready to work for you.

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michaelmaslin.com screenshot

User comment: “I love the website and have had a fun time navigating about. The ink spill is nothing short of brilliant! What an impressive body of work.”

Michael Maslin is a freelance cartoonist whose work can be found most often in the New Yorker. Michael is married to cartoonist Liza Donnelly.

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Audio samples added to products using the xspf/flash player.

Uses the Zen Cart engine & template system – a time tested open source cart with a wide developer & user base.

We recently completed work on the new BMA Audio ecommerce site.

Later improvements include an integrated blog module, and a Flash header based on images supplied by the site owner.

Flash animation header by Tom Stier.

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This kind of integration can have a big impact with search engines. They place a premium on non-commercial content that typically appears on blog sites.

And since the blog content on Asia Luna does not contain links in the posts themselves to ecommerce content, we believe that search engines do not penalize the page for appearing to be one of those blogs that are setup solely to contain links to one shopping site, in other words, a “feeder” site.

We believe that this method avoids potential profile issues with search engines. There is no need for buy links in the posts, access to their product buy links surround the blog posts!

And unlike some Zen/WordPress integrations, the shopping cart remembers what you have put into it through the whole visit. As customers reads post content, put items in their cart, then read more posts, the cart remembers their items through the entire visit. Checkout will remember when they are ready to checkout.

Zen Cart is a fine shopping cart, making it an easy experience for visitors to purchase products.

And it’s all for a good cause.

The Pittman/Crespo family make all natural health and beauty products in lovely downtown Philmont, NY.

Paul and Maria are new to ecommerce, selling their products mostly through weekend events such as farmer’s markets and local vendors before launching asialuna.com. The site is getting an increasing amount of visitors and sales directly from the site as the activity on the blog increases. Also helping with user interaction is the robust newsletter function built into the ecommerce software.

We believe the best ecommerce sites do not just present rows of products and a hard sell environment, but instead excite and inform the visitor with additional information and content to help them understand why their purchase on this particular site will be the best move they could possibly make.

Winslow Eliot made this fun fan video of their Bubble Wands Kit

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