E.Webscapes Design - specializing in custom blog designs for WordPress, BuddyPress, Movable Type, TypePad, Expression Engine, E-Commerce and more
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Bobby, from Pointless Banter is one funny guy. His brand of humor may not be for everyone .. his comedy can be a little raw, but it sure did make this project a lot of fun to work on! Pointless Banter is his insanely popular comedy blog and he approached me for a brand new design and completely new layout and organization for his existing content. . .
Interested in more of a ‘Magazine’ type layout for his site, he wanted it to be less of a blog, and more of a portal into his diverse content that he offers on his site. Bobby was one of those client who said “Black..red..gray.. and pretty much I trust you to do whatever..“. That is, until I did ‘whatever’ – - it was then that he decided that he really did have a direction in mind that he wanted to go and after providing him my first mock up for his design, THEN we really got down to business and his ideas started to flow a little better.
After some more back and forth communication and sharing of ideas – we came up with a terrific Magazine-style theme for his WordPress powered blog. The blog doesn’t display his content like you’re used to in a WordPress blog. Stepping away from the usual chronological display of posts with archived lists in a sidebar – - we laid out the content of his site and organized them into a few featured topics.
One area of his site displays featured posts that he affectionately calls “Featured Crap of the Week”. It’s in this section that he is able to feature several different posts, from several different categories – with teaser excerpts and images. In another section of his site, he’s able to display teaser snippets from his selected categories – - and at the very top of his site, he displays his Leading Article, which is an article that he wants to display front and center. He can choose to display that post for as long as he wants to, despite additional posts made to his site. Unlike chronological listings of posts – - his Leading Article does not get moved down the page when he makes new posts to his blog, so he can feature it as a Lead Article for however long he needs/wants to. Pretty spiffy!
In addition to all this functionality, I also built in a nice tabbed navigation on his front page that displays his most popular posts, video posts and most recent comments – - and that guy gets just a TON of comments on his blog, he needed a nice tidy place to show case them! I also built a nice custom container for him to display his Featured Video. All of that along with some custom treatment to his social bookmarking features, related articles and advertising space and we were done!
He’s pretty happy with the results of all of our hard work – so much so, that he’s returned to me for a few additional sites that I’ll be working on over the coming months:
“I needed to have my comedy website redesigned. Personally I felt that a redesign would help take the site to the next level. I worked with Lisa and she designed a concept that showed off my content, tightened my presentation, and transformed my site from a personal comedy blog to more of a comedy hub on the internet.
I look forward to working with her on future projects.”
I’m looking forward to it, as well – thank you!
Lisa Sabin-Wilson is a creative designer and founder of E.Webscapes. She is the author of WordPress For Dummies and BuddyPress For Dummies, and is a regular speaker at national conferences on the topics of WordPress, blogging and design. Blog | Twitter | Facebook | LinkedIn