My client William Powers was on Good Morning America yesterday – they were doing a segment on”disconnected families” – people who spend a bit too much time with their faces in their laptops or smart phones, etc…and have forgotten that there are, indeed, other people at the breakfast table.

Bill talked about his new book Hamlet’s BlackBerry and offered some solutions for “re-connecting”, like taking an “Internet Sabbath”.

Bill is mentioned in the second page of the article with a link to his site, designed by moi.

www.tinyurl.com/24y39qv

The book? Yes, it’s great, get it!

William Powers is the author of Hamlet’s BlackBerry, a book about building a good life in the digital age.

This was a really fun job and it’s been exciting to see our client’s career take off like a rocket!

Pam and I created a clean crisp site for William. Of course we used WordPress! We’ve got some cool widgets and features on this site, like the auto-updating Appearances page – plug in a date for an event and it automatically goes to the “Past Appearances” section when it’s over. The Archives page (in the NEWS section)  is also a departure from the ordinary and looks

We’ve actually created TWO sites for William, the other one www.hamletsblackberry.com will go live in about a week. William will be blogging about living a more “dis-connected” life on that site. Be sure and check it out!

Another cool side to this project is that last summer I had the pleasure of creating a web site for his wife, Martha Sherrill, who is also a wonderful writer. This is a talented family!

Cline Consulting wanted a new look for their old site. The only thing we kept from the previous site was the cool sumi-brush circle logo, everything thing else was redefined and spiffed up, and we changed the color of the brushed circle to a cool icy blue.

It’s another super-fine WordPress site, á la Pam Nilzon’s magical styling techniques.

Check it out: www.clineconsultingllc.com

We thought the color combination worked really well with the metallic tones and the sepia images give a personal feel to the pages. Andrew has worked with some amazing clients and in great locations, check out his site for more info on what he does!

The excitement never stops around here…giddy-up!
www.phoenixinternationale.com/

I love this site! Really happy with the design and features. The client, Academia de Phoenix Internationalé wanted a site with a “Renaissance/Contemporary” look and feel. Which is the first time I have ever had a request for that… Phoenix focuses on classical dressage and techniques that were in practice during the Renaissance, plus also up-to-date sports and equine psychology.

Phoenix had an existing logo, and color choice for it, (the triangle phoenix in the middle of the header) so was a bit of a challenge to incorporate it into the layout – but think it worked out fine.

We are still in need of a few pages of content and videos, but for now, it’s live and all good – the rest will be up soon.

Pam set it up in WordPress and added a Twitter feed on the left side, under “News”. Didn’t she do a lovely job? Angus MacGreigor, the driving force behind Phoenix, is an avid Twitter-er and travels a lot to dressage competitions and clinics. So the feed lets helps him keep site visitors up on the latest and where on earth he is.

Another thing, we set Phoenix up with it’s own YouTube account, www.youtube.com/user/phoenixdressage, which is going to be really valuable to them in the future as they post more dressage and horse-for-sale videos on YouTube and their site. If you are not aware of it, Google bought YouTube a few years ago, so they love each other,  (haven’t you noticed lots of videos popping up in the Google Search Results?) and having videos on the site and also cross-referenced on YouTube should help Phoenix Internationalé stay at the top of the page in local listings and, eventually, nationwide. We’ll be adding lots of videos to this site!

And finally, I had fun making a custom “coat-of-arms” for the background. That addition really tied in the classical feel and overall elegant look.

Lark Textile Design is located in Bellingham, WA and has showrooms and clients nationwide. Janet Thomas, the owner, creates beautiful, hand-woven, custom rugs and needed her web site to showcase the beauty of her work.

This layout was a lot of fun – and challenging – to design. I loved using an old wood floor for the background and then “laying” the beautiful rugs on top. Because of the complexity of the layout, (aka my “high-falutin’ designs”) Pam did a fabulous custom CSS for this site, but then she did the NEWS page as a WordPress Blog. Isn’t she smart?

The site has rotating images on the home page and 2 groovy slide shows for the High Relief and Flat Woven rug styles.

All in all, it’s lovely, functional, noteworthy and will serve Lark Textiles very well.
Check it out:

www.larktextile.com

Ed and Elizabeth Deboo, Physical Therapists in Bellingham, WA, have a gorgeous new web site. Don’t you agree?
www.integrativephysicaltherapyservices.com/

Integrative Physical Therapy Services is another wonderful WordPress site. Pam did a great job with my custom layout and setting it up with a rotating header, of course, there is a blog page too (See Health News).

Ed & Elizabeth are going to be able to easily update the site and post new articles. It’ll be great for their patients to find out more about the exceptional physical therapy services that the Deboo’s are offering and to download the intake forms they need for their initial appointment.

Bellingham Counselor and Consultant Kirke Mahy Hestad, has a beautiful new web site!

http://mahycounseling.com/

This site makes it easy for a potential client to find out more about Kirke, discover resources, and download standard forms for an office visit.

The design elements are simple and direct, with a bold use of color.

Pam set the site up in WordPress, so Kirke can easily edit it herself.

Nice ‘eh?

Mallard Ice Cream, a mainstay of Bellingham, WA, has a sparklie new web site!

www.mallardicecream.com

For the design, I used elements from the shop; metal siding and wood paneling are on the walls, the blue “splooch” is splattered on the front door, and the header mimics the outside signage. Overall, the site has a very distinctive look and ambiance, which, come to think of it, is a lot like Mallard.

Pam set up the site in Joomla, she created a blog for customers and is waiting for the web-cam to be set up (any day now!) so she can add it to the Menu page. Mallard has new flavors every day, so the web-cam will be of the Menu board so people can check to see what’s new in the shop before they come down. It’s also just fun to have a web-cam.

Drum roll pa-leeeeeze!

I finally finished the FAQ page for my site AND an additional page with all sorts of info about WordPress -  explaining the difference between wordpress.com & wordpress.org

Whoo-hoo!

Check ‘em out:

FAQ

WordPress.com & WordPress.org

Donaleen Saul – editor, writer, teacher and all around lovely person – just went live with her web site!

www.donaleensaul.com

It’s a custom WordPress site that Donaleen will be able to update herself. Isn’t it beautiful?

Donaleen has a lot of videos on her site and to get the videos on the site, Donaleen created a YouTube account, then uploaded a variety of videos she had. YouTube compressed them for the web, then I went and grabbed the “embed” code (which is so handily generated by YouTube), placed them on her site and Wa-La! Media page completed! Easy peasy.

And the other cool thing about Donaleen having a YouTube account is that since Google purchased YouTube in 2006 it’s been making videos easier to find and makes having videos on your site more “relevant”. Have you noticed more videos popping up in search engine results? That’s why. So having videos on her site, makes her more “visible” on the web and gives her better ranking possibilities.