His website is a tool for him to showcase examples of his past works, categorise them into types of work and enable potential customers to get in contact with him.

This is a fully responsive, custom template built for the WordPress CMS (Content Management System). Some key features include an integrated contact form, customer testimonials which are linked to previous works and a photo gallery attached to each portfolio item.

Design

I really enjoyed creating this design which was heavily influenced by three main factors:

1. The content
2. The existing logo
3. A photo taken from his portfolio

Each item in the list above had an impact on the design in a different way.

The Content

This is where I believe design starts. There’s no point in something looking great if it doesn’t get the message across in a clear and concise way. Once Leigh had provided me with the bulk of the content and what he wanted to communicate to his customers it was all put on the page and organised.

One of the driving factors of the content was an easy and accessible way for customers to get in contact with Leigh to request a quote.

The Existing Logo

Leigh’s existing logo design, created by the talented Anna Badger, inspired a large part of the website design.

The font used for all headings on the website is the same font as the logo to ensure the website conforms to Leigh’s established brand.

Also inspired by the logo is the black, block border around elements and the uniform, brick-like look and feel of the content blocks.

Portfolio Photo

The colour palette was inspired by a photo from Leigh’s portfolio of completed work.

I used this photo on the landing page to show a completed project with vibrant colours. Those colours are then echoed throughout the design to tie the whole website together.

Development

For this project I created a custom built template for the WordPress CMS so that we had complete control over all aspects of the design to get Leigh exactly what he wanted. I chose to implement this website using WordPress so that Leigh could easily update any information and add new pages and portfolio items quickly.

One of the key features that Leigh requested was a ‘contact details’ section which ‘followed’ visitors around the website to make it as easy as possible for the customer to get in contact with him for a quote.

Services Used

1. Design
2. Development
3. Hosting
4. Email setup and management
5. Content management
6. Search engine optimisation

Interested?

If you would like to learn more or are looking for a quote then please contact me.

Their website is a tool to provide up to date information to the members while showing parents and the community what the youngsters get up to on a week to week basis.

This is a custom template built for the WordPress CMS. Some key features include a custom photo gallery and randomly selected header photos.

Photos

The Scout Group uses Flickr to store and organise their photos in their private ‘photostream’ and then any they want to publish are put into a ‘photoset’ and made public. One of the challenges with this template was the integration of the current workflow and only displaying the published photos on the website.

There are loads of plugins out there for photo galleries and Flickr photo galleries, but they usually pull in every photo from the ‘photostream’ (not suitable for the current workflow) or they only look at one ‘photoset’ and display that (does not display all published photos) or they only display x amount of photos in each set (free version of the plugin).

My solution was to create a photo gallery from scratch using jQuery and the Flickr API. This kept the current workflow intact and allowed any new ‘photosets’ and the photos inside them to be included automatically.

Currently the gallery is included in the custom theme files, but I am planning on making the gallery into a WordPress Plugin so that it can be installed on different websites with ease.

Branding Update

Recently, The Scout Association updated their branding guidelines for the UK. The new branding included a new logo, new font, new layout and spacing and new colours.

In order to conform to the new branding guidelines, the website needed to be updated and modified. Here’s a side-by-side comparison of the two different themes.

This is a customisation of a readily available template for a low budget installation. The blog rates products and provides guides for the readers.