Expression Engine Design: Jaded Sunburns ~ Lisa Sabin-Wilson

Now THIS project was really a departure from the usual WordPress Designs that I’ve been busy doing over here. One of our hosting clients, from Blogs About Hosting came to us for a custom Expression Engine design. Expression Engine, huh? Yep! Turns out - it’s a pretty dynamic platform and I had a lot of fun providing a new design for Jade’s blog at Jaded Sunburns….

Jade wanted pink - and LOTS of it! Using an illustration she chose from Istockphoto.com - I gave her pink and THEN some! Using some Expression Engine modules, plugins and extensions - I provided her with some great functionalities like post tagging, social bookmarking and twitter updates. Jade already had some custom Expression Engine designs on her blog already - using a theme switcher, you’re able to view each of her different custom themes and decide which one you’d like to view while reading her blog. Her Expression Engine blog also is equipped to handle private posts (something that I’m used to WordPress doing on the fly, but EE needs a little help in that department in the template code).

I applied custom styles to all of her different elements like her popup comments window, photo gallery, Currently page and other pages within her site.

We had just a few minor issues getting this project rolling - - but once we did, Jade and I plowed through all of her wants n’ needs in no time at all. Jade wrote such a nice post about her new design on her blog - here’s a snippet:

Welcome to the final launch of the redesigned, completely beautified, absolutely awesome Jaded Sunburns! The difference this time, is that those claims are actually TRUE! How do I know this? Because Lisa Sabin-Wilson designed this one just for me, herself. I know, I can hardly believe it myself! It’s not like she doesn’t have a *ton of things of her own to do, including writing a book, and it’s not like lil’ ol’ me stuck out here in the deserts of hell could possibly be of more importance, because I’m not. Yet, she fit me into her tight schedule, took what turned into a trainwreck and went all godess-like all over my EE coding - and viola!

It is original. It is completely compatible with Dana’s original EE coding. It is full of little touches that you will notice as you play around within my blog, and it is mine!

Thank you SO much, Jade! I really had a blast with you design work and learning more about designing with Expression Engine, as well!