E.Webscapes Blog Design Studio » WordPress MU

E.Webscapes is hiring

Lisa Sabin-Wilson — Tue, 29 Mar 2011 23:27:34 +0000

We’ve been in the business of creating custom designed web sites since 2002 (ish) and we are looking to expand our team by one (possibly two) remote, part-time designer/developers. If you are interested in building custom web sites and making a decent income from doing so – this opportunity may be of great interest to you! Our projects will challenge you and if you’re up for it – then we’re up for talking with you!

Here’s the down and dirty:
Minimum Requirements:

Documented experience in graphic design and web development
Experience with WordPress is a must (Expression Engine, Movable Type, Typepad skills are nice, too, if you have ‘em)
HTML/CSS knowledge is a must
Good communication skills.
Excellent time management. Ability to work on a deadline
While the number one qualification for this opening is a strong sense of design (aesthetics) along with strong web skills, we’re also looking for individuals with great critical thinking skills, a good work ethic and customer service skills.
We run shop like a consultancy, which means you need to know your stuff- and their stuff (whoever they may be).
Do you have references from folks you’ve worked with in the past on web projects?? I’d LOVE to hear ‘em!
Maybe an online portfolio of work or client sites you can point me to so I can see your work in action? (screenshots are nice, but I like to dig a bit more beyond the pretty, ya know)

Types of Projects we’re doing lately:

WordPress web sites, mainly (some with and some without a blog) for small and large business, multisite networks, social communities and lots of social media integration.
WordPress with E-Commerce (Cart66, Shopp or WP E-Commerce experience greatly appreciated!)
WordPress MultiSite (and BuddyPress)
Membership sites with WordPress
(…do you get a feeling that we do a LOT of WordPress sites??? we do!)

Work Environment

Your home because this is remote work – how cool is THAT?
In your pajamas, if you like
This is part time work

We’re looking for someone who

Thinks design is about solving problems, not making them
Likes to have a lot of fun tinkering around inside the guts of a blog
Gets more kicks out of removing elements from a page than adding them
Wants to learn, push themselves, and make the web a better place to be!
Wouldn’t mind making a few extra $$’s doing something they love! How much, you say? Well, why not apply and find out (hint: we ain’t talking about coffee money here!)

If you’re interested – you can apply using this form only (any other method of application will most likely get overlooked – - so don’t try to DM on Twitter or send a message on Facebook — please use this form only.)

I give each application consideration – but please do be patient as I go through all of the applications received. I will read them all and will be contacting you within the next week, or two. Thank you!

Permalink | 6 comments |

Post tags: designer, employment, hiring, job, posting, Wordpress

Follow E.Webscapes:

Nourish Network – WordPress / BuddyPress Community

Lisa Sabin-Wilson — Sun, 28 Feb 2010 22:05:14 +0000

Lia approached E.Webscapes for a cleaner, more professional design for her web site at NourishNetwork.com that is powered by WordPress MU and BuddyPress. Lia’s site was a challenge in that it’s more than just a web site with content – it is a fully interactive social community where her members interact, discuss, share and network on a regular basis through groups, forums, messaging and more

Project Details

Specs

Lia had her ideas all set and had put a lot of thought and planning into where she wanted her web site to go, in terms of her goals and content presentation. I did a lot of custom work for the display of her content that included custom featured content tabbed gallery, dynamically resizing images depending on which section of the web site you are visiting, custom navigation menus throughout the site, based on category, page and topic and customized social community features through the use of the BuddyPress add-on for WordPress.

By using BuddyPress on her WordPress powered web site, Lia is able to host several social features on NourishNetwork.com including: Member Profiles, Member Avatars, Groups, Forums, Private Messaging, Friends and more. She has build an exciting community around the topic of sustainable foods, cooking and recipe sharing.

Powered by WordPress
Social Community powered by BuddyPress
PSD to WordPress with some Custom Graphic Design
Customized Cascading Style Sheet (CSS)
Custom programming for

Permalink | No comments |

Post tags: Blog Design, BuddyPress, Cooking, lia huber, Lisa Sabin-Wilson, nourish network, recipe blog, social community, Wordpress, WordPress MU

Follow E.Webscapes:

WeEarth.com – Custom WordPress MU and BuddyPress

Lisa Sabin-Wilson — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 21:35:46 +0000

WeEarth is a web site with a blog, social community and e-commerce store that has the goal of fostering social consciousness through art, activism and media. It is a network of socially conscious bloggers and blogs, brands and consumers, artists and entrepreneurs. The folks from WeEarth approached Lisa with their ideas for their social community that involved a custom deployment of the WordPress MU and BuddyPress platforms..

Before digging into their design project and implementing all the exciting WordPress MU and BuddyPress features – we discussed the intent and scope of their project, specifically their existing member base. WeEarth had an existing web site that was running on a proprietary CMS platform that did not offer any type of import/export of content feature – so, in building this new web site, we were truly doing it from scratch. WeEarth is completely sold on the concept of Open Source, and it was important to them to make this move to WordPress – so it was just a matter of getting it done. However, with an existing user base of 450+ – that required the import of all of their existing member data into the WordPress MU database. We accomplished this by creating an Excel (.cvs) spreadsheet of their existing member data and importing it directly into the WordPress MySQL database. Through our discussions on the size of their user base and their expected traffic and site usage, they also made the decision to host their site with our hosting services at Blogs About Hosting and are now hosted on their own dedicated server, which provides them with the space, traffic handling and resources they need now, and to accommodate their continue growth in the future.

Once all that was done, we could set about the process of bringing their social community to life!

WeEarth came to me with their own ideas on the design, having had some organic artwork created by a local artist, Hansomei, they had the basic idea in mind for their site design and base framework, including navigational architecture and content delivery – it was just a matter of bringing the WordPress MU and BuddyPress platforms together to make it all happen.

The first phase included the creation of the custom WordPress theme – which included a front page display of content that included such features as: Featured Content Gallery with a thumbnailing script that allows them to very easily create great visual imagery in their posts and display and spotlight that imagery in various areas of their website to call attention to their great content – the front page also presents the reader with the content sorted by topic, laid out in a grid-based design that keeps it all logical and organized.

The next phase was integrating the BuddyPress suite of plugins to add an exciting layer of social networking to their site. With BuddyPress, WeEarth visitors now have the ability to create an account, have a focused member profile and interact with other community members through Wire Posts, Groups, Forums, Private Messaging and adding friends and contacts from within the community. The WeEarth Community page gives you a snapshot of the current activity going on in and around the WeEarth web site, while the individual member profiles provide you with information that is specific to that particular community member.

In addition, the BuddyPress features give WeEarth very handy Member, Blogs and Groups directory pages where visitors can navigate to find new friends, blogs and groups to join and interact with. The directories are completely searchable – making it quite handy for new visitors, and existing members, to find what they are looking for.

The WeEarth Shop is powered by a great plugin for WordPress called the Shopp plugin, which is an e-commerce plugin that adds a feature-rich online store to your WordPress-powered website or blog. Shopp is not a free WordPress plugin, there are minimal costs associated with running it – - but after discussing the project details with WeEarth, we determined that it was the best solution for their e-commerce delivery. I installed it and integrated their custom design for their display of products, and product categories.

There are many other custom features and design bits to this design, including a very custom category template that presents their category archives in a very unique way (as an example – you can view their Eco Category here), the comments display, search results and many other content areas of their site have been tweaked and pulled in to incorporate their custom design work.

All in all, the site came out really well and WeEarth has achieved their goal of moving to a 100% Open Source Content Management System with all the dynamic features they were looking for to build their community on the web!

For those interested in the BuddyPress project, I am just about to publish the first ever book on BuddyPress – the official BuddyPress For Dummies with Wiley Publishing. The book is due out at the end of this year and covers the most recent version of WordPress MU and BuddyPress. You can pre-order it on Amazon.com today!

I am now in the process of developing several custom WordPress MU / BuddyPress web sites for clients that will be launching very soon. If you’re interested in working with me on a similar project, go ahead and Request a Quote today!

Permalink | 2 comments |

Post tags: Blogs About Hosting, BuddyPress For Dummies, BuddyPress Theme, E-Commerce, Eco Blog, Environmental Blog, Shopp Plugin, WordPress MU

Follow E.Webscapes:

We Heart This – WordPress MU, BuddyPress and bbPress

Lisa Sabin-Wilson — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 05:33:00 +0000

The fabulous ladies from We Heart This contacted me in the summer of 2008 wanting something a little unique, and quite challenging, for their website. Stef and Tyna were looking for more than a blog – they wanted a full out social community with membership capabilities and the whole lot! I had a really great time with their site – and they did too! Recently, they wrote about their experience with my work on their site – with an added bonus of a close-up interview with yours truly…but, for now, on to their site project…

What did they want? A web site where they could post articles of interest, attract a community of a certain demographic and invite those readers to join in the fun by registering for the blog, as well as creating their own. Without hesitation, I recommended the WordPress MU software – I’ve deployed that for several clients so they could build a community and network of blogs within their specific niche.

But – they wanted it to go a step further…and this is where I started to get a little dizzy! They wanted their readers to register as users. (Easy). Then, they wanted those users to have a very, very detailed Member profile that would include answers to a long list of questions (created by the community admins), in addition to listing their individual social network sites – - these profiles should be searchable and listed in an extensive members directory. MORE than that – they wanted:

Each individual member to have the ability to “friend” other members within the community.
They also wanted the ability for members to send private messages to other members within the community
To be able to post messages on each individual member profile
To be able to create new groups of interest – - display those groups in a searchable group directory and have a designated group admin that managed and maintained each individual group.
For each individual community member to have an “Activity Wire” that displayed what they were up to within the community – - just like your Facebook Wall. If you make a blog post, leave a comment, upload a photo gallery, leave a message on another member profile – - it’s all fed into your Activity Wire. In addition, that Wire should have an RSS feed that people could subscribe to if they wanted.
Give the members the ability to upload and crop their own avatar, create blogs, edit their profile and more.

Seriously – can you guess what my initial reaction was to their first RFP? Yep – you guessed it! I wanted to run.far.away.screaming.

But I didn’t. I took it on like a Gladiator – determined to prevail! THAT is when I found BuddyPress. It’s almost as if my client already KNEW about BuddyPress when they made their initial request because I simply could NOT believe that I found an application that would do just about 100% of everything they had asked for.

Am I dreaming??

Turns out, back in July – I was kinda dreaming, a little bit. BuddyPress was in very infant stages at that time. It wasn’t even beta. It wasn’t even alpha. It wasn’t ‘bleeding edge’ – actually, I’d say it was a hemorrhaging artery…but enough with the metaphors.

BuddyPress is comprehensive set of plugins for WordPress MU that gives the site administrator the ability to run a social network site that takes them beyond just running a community of blogs. It allows you to run an interactive community where members can interact with one another through a very smooth interface that gives you tons of options.

Did you miss the WordPress MU part? yea – at this time, it does not work for regular WordPress.org – so all you WordPress.org users stop drooling. Hopefully, one day it will be available for .org users…but right now, it’s not.

I proceeded to install WordPress MU and then I installed BuddyPress from the trunk, and also integrated a bbPress discussion forum on their site. BuddyPress, at this time, was chock full of errors and bugs – but we worked around them. I knew that the very talented Andy Peatling was heading up development on BuddyPress, and also knew that the development was very active – so I was hopeful, as were quite a few other excited users!

Through the months of September, October and November – I worked with my client on their design details, got them up and running with WordPress MU, bbPress and BuddyPress and we worked on getting the bugs ironed out by doing a lot of testing. On December 1 – we launched their site live, using the hemmorhaging version of BuddyPress – - I think we actually launched it using trunk-599, at that point.

I really loved watching the development of BuddyPress emerge into a really beautiful application. I religiously upgraded my clients site with each new version from the Trunk – which was actually quite often, as during the months of Oct-Dec, it seemed the BuddyPress developers were committing changes to the trunk on, almost, a daily basis.

I upgraded my clients BuddyPress to the Beta 1.0 Combo Pack, for its final launch and will be upgrading them to the latest, final version of BuddyPress as soon as it is hot off the presses . Want a peek?

My clients are Stefanie Andrews and Tyna Werner and their site is called We Heart This. They are a community of chicks who love stuff:

We Heart This

You can see their Members Directory of the community they’ve been building:

We Heart This Members Directory

Even I have a Member Profile on We Heart This:

We Heart This Member Profile

And here you can see my Friends within the We Heart This community, so far:

I have friends on We Heart This!

Stefanie Andrews is one of the site owners, and here is her Activity Wire that I can view from my own profile page and keep up to date on what Stefanie is doing (I can also subscribe to her activity RSS feed if I reaaaaaaaaaaally wanted to stalk her!):

Stefanie's Activity Wire

That is just a sampling of the things that BuddyPress can do – it’s really a slick application and not too difficult to get up and running…especially since you can now download a more stable Beta release and won’t have to go through the bugs and testing of the pre-pre-pre release like I did with this project, initially.

I also custom branded their membership login page so it coordinates with their overall site design:

One other custom feature that we did have to program for them is a feature they have called “Wishlists” and “Favorites”. On their main site (front door) – under each post, there are links labeled “Wishlist” and “Favorites”. The idea is that logged in community members can add posts from the main We Heart This site into their own Wishlist and Favorites list. When a logged in user sees something they love (errr….heart!) – they can click the “Favorite” link in order to add it to their own list of favorites. This gets added into a link list that then gets displayed on their Member profile so other users can see items and posts that the user really likes and can use that information for holiday shopping ideas!

An example of a post with the Wishlist and Favorites links:

Wishlists and Favorites

The Favorites and Wishlists are not a part of the Buddypress application at all. It’s something that we needed to develop for them and it, actually, hooks into the WordPress MU Link Manager. See, for every new user sign up – that user has a blog that gets created. We have created a function where WordPress MU will automatically create two Link Categories on each new blog – - one called “WishList” and the other called (you got it!) “Favorites”.

Now, when that user is logged in and clicks either the “WishList” or “Favorites” link – they are taken to the Add New Link page in their own user admin panel, and the Title field is automatically populated with the Post Title, the URL is automatically populated with the Post Permalink, and the appropriate Link category is already selected for them (either Wishlist or Favorites) – - so the only thing the user needs to do is click “Save”.

Wish lists and Favorites get automatically added to their blog sidebar, and I’ve also brought it in to display on the front page of their Member Profile. Here’s an example of the Wishlists and Favorites on my Member Profile:

My Lists on We Heart This

Pretty slick, really

This project was not without its unique set of headaches and issues – but Stefanie and Tyna were really wonderful…and extremely patient with me as I worked to fix issues, troubleshoot and address problem areas. The project, for the most part, is done – however, with the use of BuddyPress and the amazing development going on with that project, I suspect the future will bring more enhancements and improvements on We Heart This that simply could not be done with out BuddyPress and their amazing group of developers.

I’m hoping this post gives you some insight into the BuddyPress project – so much so that you may head on over and checkout the application for yourself. If you happen to – drop back here and let me know how much you like (err..heart) it and show off what you’ve done.

Great BIG kudos, respect and congratulations to BuddyPress for a simply amazing application – thank you for all your hard work!

Permalink | 6 comments |

Post tags: bbPress, Blog Design, BuddyPress, social community, Women, WordPress MU

Follow E.Webscapes:

Azfans WordPress MU Design

Lisa Sabin-Wilson — Sun, 25 Nov 2007 01:15:19 +0000

Jon from AZFans.com contacted me to design and develop a new theme for his brand new WordPress MU blog community. For those unfamiliar with WordPress MU, it is a platform based off the regular WordPress software we all know and love (from wordpress.org), however, it allows you to run hundreds of blogs from one domain. Jon started up AZfans.com to provide free blogs to Arizona sports fans…

Jon provided me with a mockup of the design and layout he had envisioned for his new WordPress MU sports blog community, and with that, I created a theme compatible with the newest version of WordPress MU 1.3 that hit the streets this month. I also customized the WordPress administration panel and login screen in order to provide continuous branding throughout his entire site:

Having had difficulty getting WordPress MU set up on his current hosting provider, Jon opted to host his blog with our own hosting services at Blogs About Hosting – our hosting services are completely WordPress MU friendly! We will work with you to get your dedicated, or shared, server configurations just right in order to properly run WordPress MU to power your new blogging community.

AZFans.com is about 98% complete and already we’re seeing new Arizona Sports Fans blogging about their favorites – that’s exciting to see! Thanks so much, Jon, for choosing E.Webscapes as your design and development solution for your new WordPress MU community – best of luck!

Permalink | One comment |

Post tags: CSS, CSS and Design, E.Webscapes, WordPress MU, WordPress MU Design, WordPressMU

Follow E.Webscapes:

Blog Design: WPAssist

Lisa Sabin-Wilson — Mon, 05 Nov 2007 02:03:29 +0000

WPAssist.Com is a comprehensive WordPress resource site and companion site to the newly released book: WordPress For Dummies by Lisa Sabin-Wilson. Yes, I designed this site myself and wanted to include it here on my Design Blog to bring attention to this new WordPress resource, news and information site. . .

The site was designed with a static front page that serves as a portal of information contained within the site, itself. Seperated into several different sections highlighting the different aspects of WordPress:

WordPress.Com
WordPress.Org
WordPress MU
WordPress Plugins
WordPress Themes
WordPress News

WordPress is a pretty fast-moving platform. The development of the WordPress.Org software is on a 120-day release schedule, at the moment. What does that mean for its user base? It means upgrading your WordPress software on a semi-regular basis. The WordPress folks are really focused on providing the best blogging platform on the web and with that comes some dynamic development as we continually see improvements to the code base, as well as great new toys for us to play with to improve our blogs for ourselves, and for our readers.

For instance – in looking at the three different flavors of WordPress covered in my WordPress For Dummies book, here are some of the most recent developments:

The WordPress.Org software was updated on 9/25/07 with the newest version, 2.3. This version IS covered in the WordPress For Dummies book and this new version brings with it some great new features like integrated tagging and software and plugin update notifications (to let YOU know when a new release has been put out. (Additionally, an update to 2.3, version 2.3.1, was released on 10/26 to address some bugs and security issues in the initial 2.3 version).
The WordPress MU software was updated on 10/30/07, bringing us version 1.3, and brought with it some of the great development we’ve already seen in WordPress.Org, like the tagging feature.
And exciting news like how the fine folks at Automattic (the people behind WordPress.Com) recently acquired the Gravatar system and have integrated that into WordPress.com blogs – - as well as there being several releases of new Gravatar plugins for the WordPress.Org and WordPress MU platforms, as well.

So, you see – - things move fast with WordPress! It’s part of what makes it such an exciting platform to work with, and community to be involved in.

To address the latest WordPress news surrounding all three flavors of WordPress, as well as information on WordPress Plugins, WordPress Themes and all around WordPress news, resources and tutorials – - I’ve launched the companion site for the WordPress For Dummies book at WPAssist.Com

WPAssist.Com is newly launched and we still have some buggy things to work through – but for all intents and purposes, it is up and live and already bringing you news, updates and resources about our FAVORITE topic… WordPress, of course!

Permalink | 2 comments |

Post tags: E.Webscapes, Lisa Sabin-Wilson, Wordpress, Wordpress for Dummies, WordPress MU, wordpress plugins, Wordpress Themes, Wordpress.Com, WordPress.Org

Follow E.Webscapes:

MissBlogger.Com – Custom WordPress MU Design and Development

Lisa Sabin-Wilson — Thu, 21 Jun 2007 23:55:46 +0000

MissBlogger is the newest multiple user blog network, powered by WordPress MU, to hit the net! This is the first custom design and development project I’ve done for a client using the WordPress MU program – and it was great fun! Anthony requested a design that is feminine, but not girly, using some of his favorite colors in a scheme that includes dark grey, orange, and pink. He chose an illustration from iStock for this design. . .

Once I had the graphics designed and the CSS all laid out and ready to go, it was time to apply it with the WordPress MU environment. For those unfamiliar with WordPress MU, it is an application that allows you to run multiple blogs on one domain, with one single installation of WordPress MU. This application what WordPress.Com uses to run their very popular hosted blogging platform – at least in its most basic form. The WordPress MU application is really nice for blog networks or any company or individual who has a need to run several different blogs on one domain.

I installed several different plugins and themes for the MissBlogger users to choose from and take advantage of. Not all plugins and themes developed for WordPress are compatible with WordPress MU – it can get confusing and does take some time to figure out which ones work, and which ones don’t.

Anthony is very happy with the design I provided for MissBlogger.Com – and is very excited to open up his MissBlogger network to new bloggers everywhere! Best of luck, Anthony!

Permalink | No comments |

Post tags: Black, Blog Design, Custom WordPress MU design, Female, Feminine, Grey, Miss Blogger, MU blog design, Multiple User WordPress, Orange, Pink, Women, WordPress MU, WordPress MU design and development, WordPress MU Designer Lisa Sabin-Wilson E.Webscapes

Follow E.Webscapes: