E.Webscapes Blog Design Studio » Illustration and Artwork

Myrtle Beach Reviews : WordPress Blog Design

Lisa Sabin-Wilson — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 19:47:33 +0000

When Clayton came to E.Webscapes for his design project, Myrtle Beach Reviews, E.Webscapes was all too excited to get started! Samantha Wise, the illustrator of “Sandie Beech”, created a fun and inspiring graphic illustration for Clayton’s design that E.Webscapes built on, creating a “notebook” look for the entrance into Sandie’s Review area.

Highlighting categories and subcategories in the top horizontal dropdown menu, travelers can choose exactly what they’re looking for when planning their Myrtle Beach vacation (or relocation!). E.Webscapes created three main areas of focus on the home page design – Featured Condos, Upcoming Events and, using the Post Ratings plugin, the top rated Reviews from the blog.

The blog itself carries a variation of Samantha’s illustration within a custom three column design. E.Webscapes developed a custom category template that incorporated a listing of sub-categories as well as the post ratings so users can quickly choose the highest rated areas to visit during their trip. The end result is a comprehensive review site that provides incredible reference for anyone interested in spending time in Myrtle Beach!

I want to thank you for doing such a great job on the design. I like it very much I have had many complements.

Thank you for the opportunity to be a part of your project, Clay!

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Post tags: condo review, Custom Illustration, Custom WordPress Blog Design, graphic design, Myrtle Beach, real estate, Samantha Wise, shopping reviews, South Carolina, vacation review

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Nik Payton : WordPress Blog Design

Lisa Sabin-Wilson — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 16:39:05 +0000

Nik Payton came to E.Webscapes with his clarinet and a vision. Illustrator Samantha Wise created a top-notch illustration, and We put it to good use in an outstanding custom blog design using WordPress! This swing jazz artist wanted something a little retro, so We spruced up his design with bits of graphics that are fun and funky but still clean and conservative.

He completely customized the main template to show a grid of post excerpts beside Nik’s photos, recently played tracks on Last.fm, gigs, posts and comments. He tidied up the footer with four columns to sort out Archives, Categories, Social networks and even a blogroll.

Great! It looks superb. This is exactly what I was after. Knockout job!!!!

Nik was pretty excited about his design, and so are we! Thanks, Nik!

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Post tags: Custom Blog Design, custom illustration by Samantha Wise, custom templates, musician blog, Nik Payton, WordPress Design

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Feels Like Magic WordPress Blog Design

Lisa Sabin-Wilson — Mon, 09 Jul 2007 03:04:27 +0000

I finished up the new design for Barb’s site at Feels Like Magic this week – in all it’s purple, green and blue sparkley glory! Barb had her logo completed by illustrator Nola Cooper of Classic Creations Design – once the illustration was complete, I tackled the rest of her design work, including a special E-Commerce Shopping Cart solution integrated into her WordPress blog . . .

Barb had a lot of great ideas on what she would like for her new blog design, including Flickr integration, an E-commerce solution for her jewlery sales and the vivid color sheme of purple, green and blue. It was great fun to complete, and a bit of a challenge as this was the first time I integrated a full E-Commerce solution into a WordPress blog using a PayPal shopping cart solution and the E-Commerce plugin for WordPress. Now, Barb can sell her jewlery straight off her blog, using the full features of WordPress to help her organize her inventory! Her design includes the use of WordPress Widgets to make it very, very easy for Barb to update and arrange the information contained in the sidebar of her new design.

Barb had this to say about her new design:

There are so many little design aspects (look at the header!) that Lisa created, and they all add up to a beautiful, magical, and unique – yet not over the top (I hope ) – site design.

When I contacted E.Webscapes about designing the site, I asked for an “expansive feel” for the design, and imagined a lot of white. I wanted the site to feel a bit like the previous (free) theme… kind of like being in a big room.

The design does give an “expansive feel”, but instead of feeling like I’m in a huge room, I think the design brings the reader in to the posts… kind of like reading a letter from a friend – up close and personal.

Yes, I’m very happy with the design.

Thank you so much, Barb – I had great fun with it!

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Post tags: Blog Designers, CSS, custom blog illustration and blog design, Custom WordPress Blog Design, E.Webscapes Design Studio, Feels Like Magic, Feminine Blog Design, graphic design, Jewelry, purple white green, Women Bloggers, Wordpress Designer, wordpress designer lisa sabin-wilson

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HIStalk – WordPress Custom Theme

Lisa Sabin-Wilson — Mon, 11 Jun 2007 20:23:31 +0000

HIStalk came to me for a custom design for his new WordPress blog. Though, it’s not really a new blog, because up until we launched this design for him, he was blogging over at Blog City and was ready to make the change over to WordPress – and, of course, I was very happy to help him do just that! After having the talented Samantha Wise create a custom illustration for his blog, I created his new 3-column template, according to the specs he provided. . .

After installing the latest version of WordPress 2.2 on his domain, I set up his new blog design that has some great features he wanted to integrate:

A spotlight for his RSS Feed ‘above the fold’ to encourage more subscriptions. I created a nifty graphic and spot just to fit the bill!
3 column layout with the content in the middle, sidebars on either side. He wanted this layout to have a fluid width – so it does expand and contract based on the size of your browser window.
PLENTY of room for his sponsors and advertisers
The ability for readers to print each article, if desired. I accomplished this using the WP Print plugin by Lester Chan
The ability for readers to share his articles on several social bookmark/networking sites – this was accomplished through the use of Alex King’s Share-This plugin
Widgets!! With the new release of WordPress 2.2 – Widgets are built right in . . so there is no excuse to create themes that are not widget compatible anymore. WordPress users will be demanding ‘widget ready’ themes more and more, so of course I build in widget functionality for his new theme
His Archives Page serves as a very nice site map, as well

Overall, HIStalk was a boat load of fun to do, and if you’re at all interested in news and information regarding the Medical IT world – this is the place to be. From his own About Page:

Let’s say you work in a hospital that’s a big customer of Siemens or McKesson or Cerner. You decide, on your own time, to write a scathing letter to the editor of a healthcare IT magazine, justifiably ripping your underperforming vendor, but not necessarily representing your hospital in doing so. It won’t be long before your CIO or other hospital executive will come knocking on your door, responding from vendor’s heat to shut you up, threatening all kinds of unpleasantness, like lawsuits or intentional service slowdowns. Maybe you wrote that letter on your own time, not representing your employer, but I bet you’d still be sorry. Freedom of speech doesn’t mean freedom from having retainer-based lawyers threatening and intimidating you for factual but unflattering public proclamations. I don’t need that kind of headache on my day job coming from something I’ve said on HIStalk. That’s why I don’t use my real name, which not coincidentally is why I can also be highly opinionated and critical when warranted. If you see me on the street and ask me directly if I’m Mr. HIStalk, I’ll give you a vague answer to avoid lying, but I won’t confirm your suspicion. No one who works for my current employer knows that I write HIStalk.

Sounds juicy, too!

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Post tags: 3 column fluid wordpress theme, Blog Illustration, Business Blog, custom css, Custom Illustration, E.Webscapes Design Studio, graphic design, illustration by samantha wise, Medical Blog, Medical Information Technology Blog, Medical IT, Medical News, Skin, template, theme, WordPress Blog Design, WordPress Design, Wordpress Designer, wordpress designer lisa sabin-wilson

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Celebrity Dog Watcher – Custom WordPress Theme

Lisa Sabin-Wilson — Mon, 11 Jun 2007 19:58:08 +0000

We all know – - all too well – - about existing addictions to celebrity gossip! But who is gossiping about celebrity dogs? Yes, that is right – the dogs owned by celebrities have their own ‘watch dog’ website at Celebrity Dog Watcher run by Kym and hosted on our servers at Blogs About Hosting. After making the transition from her old host – I imported her site over, upgraded her WordPress software to the latest and then We went to town on her design work. . .

Kym had a custom illustration created for her blog by the talented folks from Pop Arf. Once we received the creative work from them, We created the blog template and design for Kym, based on her specifications. She wanted it clean, simple, but in keeping with the overall ‘pop art’ look she was going for. Kym wanted a 4 column theme to accommodate her advertisers and sponsors – and We provided a very clean, 4 column layout for Kym’s celebrity dog gossip site.

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Post tags: Business Blog, Celebrity gossip blog, custom css, E.Webscapes Design Studio, google adsense, graphic design, Skin, template, theme, WordPress Blog Design, WordPress Design, Wordpress Designer

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Perfume Posse : WordPress Design

Lisa Sabin-Wilson — Tue, 06 Feb 2007 06:39:11 +0000

About a year ago, I did the design of a new site called Perfume Posse. The girls behind the project, Patty and March, LOVE perfume and all things girly and have really turned their passion into a blog, popular with perfume fans everywhere. Back then – we did it in a very sweet pink and white, feminine theme with a retro flare. This time around.. they wanted something a little more edgy…

Imagery used in the new Perfume Posse redesign was originally created by talented illustrator and artist, Rion Vernon of PinUpToons.com. Rion is a highly regarded artist whose credits include film, animation, and interactive projects with DreamWorks, Nickelodeon and Paramount Productions. Happily, Rion provided us with his direct consent to use the two sexy girls you find in the artwork on this design – Patti and March couldn’t have been more thrilled! I, of course, always like working with Rion’s artwork.. I’ve purchased a few signed prints of my own, I just adore his work.

The design features a 3 column CSS layout, with the bulk of the space given to their content and blog posts. They run a group blog with 3-4 authors – - Patti and March are the main authors of the site, but even on a perfume/cosmetics site, they have 2 guys who occassionally post on their site, as well. Each author has their own fun icon that shows in the posts they write, so their readers – upon first glance of the site, know exactly who wrote each post without too much of a search – They make for a fun way to add a bit of personality to each post on their site.:

They really wanted to turn up the steam with this redesign and bring a little sexy back – and I think we’ve accomplished just that with this new design featuring Rion Vernon’s work, along with the black and red color scheme. They’re going to be rolling out a new kinky perfume campaign in the near future, so if that sparks your interest – keep your eyes peeled.

Thanks to Patty and March for chosing to work with me, once again, on this design project – I really had a great time with it!

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Post tags: Artwork, Black, cosmetics, CSS, Custom WordPress Blog Design, Designers, graphic design, hearts, Illustration, kinky, Perfume, red, rion vernon, sexy theme, Wordpress Blog Designer

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Odds N’ Ends

Lisa Sabin-Wilson — Sun, 28 Jan 2007 01:53:04 +0000

One of the more exciting aspects of this past week was the much anticipated release of the newest version of WordPress – version 2.1 – Ella, named after jazz singer Ella Fitzgerald. Before being quick to hop on the upgrade bandwagon, take a moment to arm yourself with the latest information on what’s new, what’s changed and the ultimate question from my clients . .

Will my plugins work with 2.1?

A recommendation – wait until version 2.1.1 is released that fixes all the bugs reported from thousands of brave 2.1 users who upgraded right away. I do that with any piece of software that I depend on, on a regular basis, in my day to day life – - it’s never a bad thing to be cautious. That being said, I did upgrade my personal blog to 2.1 without any real major issues. I have attempted to upgrade this site (by making a copy of this site onto a subdomain for testing) and found that a few plugins that I depend on aren’t quite yet comptatible with 2.1 – so I shall wait until the plugin developer has a change to upgrade the plugin, or until I can find some time to diddle.

Speaking of time – there just isn’t enough of it in a day, is there? My waiting list continues and to answer any burning questions for you, I will be processing Januarys orders and requests after Feb 1. Why then? Feb. 1 is the first deadline I need to meet for my editor at Wiley Publishing for the “WordPress for Dummies” book I’m currently writing. As soon as I pass that deadline, I will be able to take on a few more projects that you have been patiently waiting for.

I also have quite a few active client projects I’m working on – - quite a few that I will be launching over the next week, so keep your eyes peeled here for those new site launches. I’ve had some real fun with these projects – - I got ahold of some real spicy ones this time around!

A small, but exciting bit of business news – - last week E.Webscapes turned into an LLC (Limited Liability Company) and, at least on paper, is now officially ‘E.Webscapes Design Studio, LLC’.

I am also in the process of interviewing/hiring an assistant to help me here with some of the more administrative tasks that also take up a lot of time. I have a few folks I’m talking to and have under consideration at this time, so I’m not accepting applicants currently. If that changes – I will surely post the job opening with details right here on this blog.

Finally, I wanted to post some information about image use – as it is something I have gotten a few emails about over the past several weeks. Specifically, imagery from istockphoto.com - which is a very popular place on the web to obtain stock photography and artwork/illustrations for use in your website and blog design. Quite a few of my clients use iStock as their resource for imagery – - including yours truly. The images of the happy jumping people you see on this site was purchased through iStock – I just love my happy jumpy people!

I recently had a conversation with a collegue, and a seperate conversation with a client, which told me that there was some helpful clarification that can provide some answers in terms of what CAN and CANNOT be done with the images you purchase from iStockphoto. Here is the basic run down:

You CAN

Make one copy of the image file for your backups.
Use the image in virtually any kind of promotional item : websites, advertising, packaging, personal projects, CD or DVD packaging, film and video presentations, multimedia presentations, commercials, books, etc…

You CANNOT

Use images in templates for resale. (using the image in a template, and then reselling that template with that image over and over again for profit. Designers can, however, use an image that has been purchased use in one clients design project only – - but cannot reuse that image in any other design or promotional work).
Display images larger than 800 * 600 on the web.
Exceed the 500,000 print run restriction.
Superficially modify the content, plunk it on a t–shirt, mug, poster, template or other item, and sell it to others for consumption, reproduction or re–sale. This requires an Extended License.
Resell the images on “Print on Demand” products, such as Cafe Press products, posters, cards, etc.

That last bit answers a lot of questions that I recieve from clients when they want me to take the image they purchased and create graphics for use on Cafe Press products, and simliar type merchandise. Most of the issues listed above are terms you need to abide by when purchasing an image with iStock’s Standard Content License Agreement. However, you can also purchase the images under iStock’s Extended License Option in order to be able to extend some of the things you are limited to under their standard option.

On a similar note – I’ve been working with several artists and illustrators, over the years, who are freelancers and provide custom illustrations and artwork for my clients who are interested in purchasing their work. While it is an extra cost to consider – going that route is a really nice way to ensure that the artwork on your website is unique and individual to YOU and no one else in the world has it. I collaborate with these talented artists on the projects we work on together – however, my clients are not only a customer of mine - – but also a customer of the illustrator/artist they have chosen to work with.

If you fall into this category – please keep in mind that you need to find out from the artist you have chosen to work with what the terms of their licensing agreements are. Artists are like snowflakes – - no two are exactly the same, so make sure you dig a little and ask those important questions.

Hope everyone is having a GREAT weekend!

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Post tags: artists, Custom Illustration, illustrators, iStock, iStockphoto, licensing, stock art, stock photography, Wordpress, Wordpress for Dummies, wordpress plugins, wordpress upgrade

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WordPress Design – SCRAPcast

Lisa Sabin-Wilson — Mon, 08 Jan 2007 22:15:54 +0000

The design for Lynette at SCRAPcast has been in the works for sometime now and I’m happy to announce the launch of her new redesign. I had a LOT of fun working on this, as I had the opportunity to work with talented artist and illustrator Samantha Wise once again …

The process started with Samantha creating the illustration for Lynette. Once I obtained all the necessary files from Sam – then it was my turn to take those graphics and turn them into the blog design that Lynette was looking for for her scrapbooking site. Samantha created the illustration of the lady in the header, as well as the cute scissors and background area of the blog. I took those elements and created scrapbooky headers for her sidebars, the header and the cute post-it notes used for the page navigation for the site. I also created some cute, but useful and very functional, custom coding and styling for her comments section.

Lynette’s site is all about scrapbooking – but she places an interesting twist on it. Her site name SCRAPcast gives a hint and her tagline “Scrapbooking for your Speakers” gives more of a hint. Lynette provides podcasts just chock full of a wealth of information about scrapbooking. Definitely a MUST VISIT for those with an interest in scrapbooking.

From Lynette’s “About Page“:

SCRAPcast is a unique online audio program – called a podcast – for anyone immersed in any type of paper craft. SCRAPcast is first and foremost about scrapbooking and paper arts, but also embraces the lives of the people enjoying them. Our shows offer great tips, product information, real life stories, and interviews with industry celebrities & everyday crafters. The mission of SCRAPcast is to entertain and educate paper crafters who lead very busy lives, but still want to find time to preserve their family’s story.

If scrapbooking interests you – - give SCRAPcast a visit soon!

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Post tags: 2 column, Blog Illustration, CSS, Custom, Custom Illustration, Custom WordPress Blog Design, Designers, graphic design, purple, white, Wordpress Blog Designer

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Custom Illustration and Blog Design: Preppy Cafe

Lisa Sabin-Wilson — Wed, 27 Sep 2006 11:55:24 +0000

We launched the re-design of Elizabeth’s Preppy Cafe this week – - this re-design marks her 4th E.Webscapes design on Elizabeth’s blog (3 for hre Preppy Cafe blog – and the other for her Suburban Cupcake blog). We always have so much fun with her blog designs because she brings so much energy and enthusiasm to the table with each new project! …

Preppy Cafe is powered by WordPress – with a few added plugins and scripts to add in some functionality that she needed for her blog.

This time around, Elizabeth had her illustration artwork done by Samantha Wise – who also did the illustration on Elizabeth’s Suburban Cupcake blog, as well. Elizabeth is a big fan of Samantha’s work – and we’re beginning to see why. You can check out more of Samantha’s illustration artwork on SamanthaWise.com.

This time around, Elizabeth also wanted to integrate a discussion forum into her site. We chose Simple Machines as the software to power her new forum and then designed a skin for the forum to closely match her blog site:

Elizabeth’s site is pink, green and all things preppy. You can read what Elizabeth had to say about her experience with us right here in our client testimonials – as well as here and here on her own site.

Big thanks to Elizabeth for allowing me to focus some of my creative energies in her space on the web.

Tags: blog design, wordpress, wordpress design, simple machines forum, simple machines, smf, forum design, preppy cafe, e.webscapes

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Post tags: Blog Design, CSS, Custom Illustration, Preppy Cafe, Samantha Wise, Simple Machines Forum Design, WordPress Blog Design, WordPress Design

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WordPress: New Music Nation Blog Design

Lisa Sabin-Wilson — Wed, 27 Sep 2006 03:32:29 +0000

When Dave contacted me to create a new design and structural layout for his site at New Music Nation – I seriously didn’t know what I was getting myself into. Almost two months after that initial contact, I feel like I’ve given birth and handed custody over to Dave with promises to visit often to see how the child grows!…

Every so often, one of those special projects comes my way – - a project that I can really sink my teeth into, get really excited about and experience serious separation issues when it’s all over and 100% handed off to my client. That’s the experience I had with New Music Nation.

First, let me introduce you to the man behind the site. His name is Dave Powers and he reviews music at his new site. Dave is the the former producer of MTV2’s Subterranean, 120 Minutes, Hip Hop’s Toughest Rhymes, Playlistism and more. His site is just full of great music reviews of all types of genres, artists, music labels .. as well as current news coming out of the music industry. If you are a hard core (or even a soft core) music fan, this would be the site for you to visit.

The logo for New Music Nation was created and hand drawn by MTV2’s own Jim Shearer. Jim is a V-Jay for MTV2’s Subterranean by day.. and an extremely talented doodler by night (or is it the other way around?..) Jim provided me with hard (paper) copies of the hand drawn logo in black and white, which they FedEx’d to me. Dave provided me with the specs for the colors he wanted in the logo. I took the logo, scanned it, got out my virtual crayons and went to work. I’m currently in cahoots with Dave to talk Jim into doing this as a freelance side job – - his work is just that good.

The design on this site was just the beginning – and probably the easiest part to complete, compared to the rest of the job that lie ahead of me. New Music Nation is powered by WordPress. I started out the project, on day one, by installing WordPress on Dave’s domain so that he could work at transferring his articles and posts from his previous site. That site was done all in HTML – so there was no easy way to import the articles and posts from that site, except to cut and paste them in. He worked on that part of it, while I worked on the design and logo.

When we were both done with our respective parts, we got on the phone and started plotting our next move. We quickly realized that this was not going to be over anytime soon. New Music Nation has over 1300 categories that Dave had spent time building. 1300 categories, and growing. This brought us to some major decision making about how the site and navigation would be structured. His site is very category driven.

I did a lot of custom coding for this one. First, he has a feature that allows his readers to browse an individual category by month. If you look at his home page you’ll see drop down menus in each of the different sections that allows you to choose to view posts from a specific month, within the category itself. This is not a function that is built into WordPress, nor could I locate a plugin that would allow me to do this easily. So, I rolled up my sleeves and dug into the PHP code for WordPress and built that function in, just for Dave.

Second, is the search by category feature. You can search his site doing it the usual, default way by just typing in a keyword and clicking “GO” – however, you can also type in a keyword – then choose a category in the drop down menu to search for that keyword that exists within posts inside a particular category. Easy you say? Perhaps – however, remember that Dave’s site has 1300 categories. That would make for a HUGE drop down menu, no? Dave pared his choices down and decided he only wanted a few select parent categories to appear inside the drop down menu to allow readers to search within 5 or 6 of the 1300 categories.

Lastly, the big challenge was to create an alphabetical navigation system for his readers to be able to browse his 1300 categories. His structure is something like this:

- Parent Category
– - roughly 850 subcategories

The result? You can view, for example, his Artists Directory. “Artists” being a parent category – - then he has about 850+ subcategories that single out specific artists within the list. We created a subcategory navigation system that would allow the reader to navigate the artists in alphabetical order. We started with a page that loaded ALL 850 subcategory listings.. and ended up with a nice, orderly and clean alphabetical navigation system for the directories.

Whew!

Dave and I ran into quite a few issues in working toward a good solution for this category navigation system for his site. At first, the pages were loading all of the category listings and ended up crashing the site – - or causing his host to give him the dreaded “Your site is temporarily suspended because you’ve used more than 20% of the CPU”. We finally came to an agreement on a solution – and the result is what you see on his site today.

This project was surely a good learning experience for me. Though it is a site that uses WordPress – it certainly is not a site that uses WordPress out of the box. There was a great deal of customization going on – with the design, yes – but a great deal of customization in the code that you don’t necessarily see.. but can surely enjoy when you visit and navigate his site.

So many great things came out of this project. The ability for me to stretch the limitations of my own knowledge and learn a few new tricks is always a positive thing for me. On a personal note, doing Dave’s project kind of reawakened that music fan that exists inside of me — the part of me that’s been ignored due to a hectic and busy lifestyle. I sincerely have to thank Dave for that one. Dave is excited about music . . it’s a passion within him that shines through the work he’s doing on his site today – and it’s contagious! If you have a moment in your day – be sure to give a visit to New Music Nation.. be sure to let Dave know I sent ya!

Tags: Blog Design, WordPress, custom design, wordpress design, music, music reviews, mtv, mtv2, new music nation, PHP,

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Post tags: blog designer, blog designs, CSS, Dave Powers, Jim Shearer MTV, New Music Nation, New Music Nation Custom WordPress Blog Design'>, WordPress 3 column, Wordpress As CMS, WordPress site design

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